Bob's Books

Why this book:  Selected by my literature reading group. I had read it before, but wanted to read it again and advocated for it. 

Summary in 3 sentences:  Okonkwo is a prominent leader in an indigenous village in the upper Niger valley in Africa, and we get to know him, his family, the customs and culture of his village.  Various challenges befall him, his family and village and through how they deal with them, we get to know him and the world he lives in.  When English Missionaries arrive to spread the word of Christ and the values of the Church and Mother England, we are witness to the collision between two cultures and systems of values.  

My Impressions: My second time reading it – this is a classic for a number of reasons.  It was first published in 1959 and provides what appears to me to  be an unvarnished, un-romanticized look at an African (Nigerian) indigenous culture before, during, and after contact with clumsy though perhaps well-meaning missionaries.  It is a classic because it is an African perspective on the cultural imperialism that took place throughout the African continent under the guise of Christianization and civilization, but what in the process disrupted and destroyed the social order that had been working more-or-less effectively for generations, perhaps millennia, and caused untold suffering in a heavy-handed paternalistic effort to civilize and “improve” these people. 

The protagonist of the story – both hero and anti-hero – is Okonkwo who we get to know as a child growing up as the son of a ne’er do well in his village, how he overcame that stigma and rose up to be one of the leading men of his village. He would not be seen as virtuous by our Western standards – but he met the standards of his time and place – not a bad man at all, but powerful, a courageous warrior, an ambitious man, who took his obligations to his immediate and extended family and kin and his village seriously..  Okonkwo was hardly an ideal father or husband by our standards – to his multiple wives and many children –  but he was a man of his time and context.  He provided for them, took care of them, and expected complete obedience, which was a cultural norm.  

The first 2/3 of the book is a series of stories and incidents that show his evolution from a young strong hero into an influential, well-respected and powerful leader of his community, with rank and titles,  until due to an accident, he was banished from his community for seven years, as was the custom of his community.  Never one to violate the customs and traditions of his community,  he complied without complaint, and took his family to live in another village, where he did well in farming and as a new member of that community, until he was allowed to return to his own.  At this point he is close to 40 years old.

During the time of his exile, Christian missionaries began proselytizing in the various villages of that part of Nigeria, arguing that people should give up the primitive gods and customs of their ancestors and accept the one Christian God and the values of Western civilization.  Okonkwo and many others in the native community were deeply offended by this presumption of superiority of a white religion and culture,  and were especially angered that some in their community chose to give up their own religion and values and follow those of the white missionaries and their black converts. The tension between the traditional customs, religion and values and those imported by the whites and adopted by many of otherwise disenfranchised from the native community, came to a head, with predictably unpleasant results.

We get to know Okonkwo and some of his wives and children within their own context and as real human beings with whom I could relate, not as cut-out aboriginals playing symbolic roles in this conflict between cultures.  Though many of the customs that they had in their community I found distasteful, eg, twins were considered unnatural and were put out in the forest to die, and women were clearly subservient in a patriarchal society.  But the villages had their own effective means for settling disputes and there was a stability that seemed to work. All that was upset at the forcible imposition of outside values on the community.

The first of the white missionaries was relatively enlightened, as he seemed to respect differences and found compromises between Christian values that seemed to work with the indigenous customs and values.  When he left, he was replaced by an uncompromising, my-way-or-the-highway, us-against-them minister who chose to rule with the heavy-handed authority of the Church and the Queen. That’s when things started falling apart. 

This simple little book is thought provoking and deserves its status as a classic of Western interaction with indigenous African cultures. I recall reading that Things Fall Apart inspired Barbara Kingslover to write The Poisonwood Bible, another great novel about missionaries in Africa, which I’ve read twice. 

Things Fall Apart is part of what is referred to as Achebe’s African Trilogy.  I have not yet read the follow-on book written by Achebe a couple of years later, No Longer at Ease, which features Okonkwo’s grandson. 

Why this book: When I asked my friend Alison what book in the past few years she’d read that had impacted her, she responded immediately with this book. I mentioned it to my friend Luke, an avid Sci Fi reader who responded “Fantastic book.”  Reviews on line are mixed, from very positive, to strong down checks. 

Summary in 3 sentences  The novel is written from the first person perspective of a paid universe traverser who travels to different versions of Earth that simultaneously exist in parallel, to gather information.  We also learn about the version of earth that she lives in, which is a dystopian future vision of the America we live in today.  In traversing these multiple realities, our protagonist is learning not only about other versions of our earth in parallel universes, but also about herself and her world of friends, enemies, relations, and trusted confidants,  and she and the story evolve from confronting different versions in different realities, of the people she knows in the world from which she is travelling. 

My Impressions: Very imaginative book – a Sci Fi novel which includes a lot of different and creative ideas and content.  Frankly, I was confused for the first 70 or so pages and considered putting it down – but chose to read on, out of curiosity to see what came next, and with the assumption that somehow,  it would all come together. It did, finally.  Though especially in the early scene-setting stages, I was more confused than entertained or inspired,  the author had a fascinating idea, which became more compelling as I read on,  and as more details fell into place, it came together quite well at the end, with a satisfying and morally relevant conclusion that helped me understand why Alison may have found The Space Between Worlds so impactful. 

In a future world, a genius has developed a capacity for people in his world to travel to different versions of our reality, BUT with the caveat that, if in the visited parallel reality, there is a version of the travelrser living in that reality, the traverser cannot co-exist in that visited reality with the a different version of themselves.  One of them must either be already dead or the traverser will die upon entering it.  In this future world, the novel’s protagonist Cara, is hired by the controller of this multi-verse travel mechanism to travel between multiple parallel versions of his reality and gather data about things that have happened, or have been developed that would be of value in the reality from which she is traversing.  Her job is to bring valuable data and information that will help the corporation that is paying her for making these trips.

Additionally, and adding a different dimension to this novel, the Earth reality from which and to which our protagonist traverses is a dystopian version of our own – well into the future.  “Civilization” has subdivided itself into the “haves” – living in Wiley City –  with all the current and future advantages of our civilized welfare state, and the “have nots” – living in “Ashtown” –  a primal hell-scape of pollution, gang violence, controlled by a brutal warlord. These two worlds are kept separate with a border which in order to cross it, requires permission and passes.  The analogy that occurs to me is San Diego and Tijuana.  It also reminds me of the dystopian future sci-fi novel Void Star, by Zachary Mason (my review here.) Cara grew up in Ashtown, and is now living and working in Wiley City and her greatest aspiration is to become one of the Wiley City privileged by acquiring  citizenship.

And to add another human dimension to our story, there is a tense and complicated love story between Cara, our protagonist, and Dell, her handler and mentor within the Eldridge corporation that is conducting the research based on the multi-verse travel. Dell is a native and pure Wiley City person, and manages Cara’s schedule of assigned travels and responsibilities.

It took me a while to figure all this out, as slowly throughout the novel, the pieces to the  puzzle started falling into place, one piece at a time, answering my questions, and slowly dissipating the confusion I was experiencing.

Why did I struggle with this book?  First, I didn’t particularly care for Cara, the book’s protagonist in whose first-person voice the book is written. During much of the book, she is angry, with a chip on her shoulder the size of Idaho (where I finished reading the book.)  Having grown up in Ashtown, with a broken, dysfunctional family, mother a sex-worker and addict, she has gotten a job in Wiley City and feels very lucky, but also struggles to adapt.    She is VERY keen on fitting in and ultimately gaining citizenship in Wiley City, where all the disadvantages and challenges of poverty and lower-class vulnerability she had experienced growing up in Ashtown are taken care of. She is tough, angry, bitter, and ambitious, but also vulnerable and even a bit paranoid.  

As a traverser, Cara travels from Earth Zero which it seems is the baseline reality for the novel, into various versions of Earth-reality that are given different numbers (Earth 22, Earth 175, etc) where her task is to study and report on differences she finds in the versions of the reality she visits, different from where she lives in on Earth Zero.  I got confused between characters who appear in multiple versions of Earth reality, but indeed are either somewhat or radically different in each reality – which eventually I realize, is part of the message of the book. 

The story is told from Cara’s perspective, and she is the only character who is truly well developed.  The other characters are less so, partly because we get to know different versions of each of them in different realities – again, part of the message of the book. We only really get to know Cara’s love interest Dell in Cara’s Earth Zero reality.  

As this complex story progresses, there are a number of surprises, twists and turns that keep the reader a bit off-balance.  The story culminates in a power struggle between the leaders from Cara’s life in Ashtown and her life in Wiley City – a power struggle with origins not only in their Earth-Zero lives, but also influenced by events and occurrences in other earth realities that Cara has visited – and Cara is a key catalyst in precipitating this power struggle. 

If all of this sounds confusing, it is – but as one moves through the novel, the various themes develop and come together:  the Wiley City – Ashtown tension, the goals of the Eldridge – the company that controls the multi-verse traversing, the love story between Dell and Cara, the good-vs-evil theme behind the separation of Wiley City and Ashtown, not only in Earth Zero but in the 352 (or so) other Earth realities.  And ultimately, and what I found most interesting in the book, all this has an effect on Cara, and we see how from her experiences in multiple dimensions, the evolution of Cara’s character, her goals, dreams and ambitions.  And finally through Cara, we gain insight into what all these multiple realities may mean in practical terms, to someone (each of us?) who is living in one of the multitude of realities that may exist. 

In The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson creates a novel which explores the implications of some of the quantum multiple universes theories that theoretical physicists have proposed.  It also begs many metaphysical questions about “reality” and whether there is such a “one” thing.  If you google “quantum theory multiple universes” you’ll see a multitude of entries discussing this intriguing idea.  To the question “Can you live in a parallel Universe?”  Google responds:  “Those alternate universes are completely separate and unable to intersect, so while there may be uncountable versions of you living a life that’s slightly – or wildly – different from your life in this world, you’d never know it.” In The Space Between Worlds, that assumption is set aside and we play with an imagined future scenario in which it may be possible to get to know a different version of oneself in different situations and contexts, good bad, evil or spiritually transcendent.

Cara: “Maybe I’m not the only one who feels the tugs of my other lives. Maybe they hover over us, steering us, constantly.” p 220

The Space Between Worlds is not a book I’d recommend to most of my friends, few of whom read Sci-Fi.  But I found it clever and intriguing, and the conclusions were worth the effort to get there.   

Why this Book:  Selected by my SEAL reading group as our June 2022 selection, based on input from several who had read it.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Project Hail Mary begins with our narrator waking up on a gurney, covered with sensors,  with numerous tubes attached, and not knowing who he is, where he is, or how he got there. As his memory slowly returns he realizes that he is on a spacecraft, no longer in our solar system, and begins recalling the events that led to his current situation, as well as realizing that he has a crucial tasks to fulfill. The story of the book bounces back and forth between his memories of what was happening in his life on earth that led to finding himself alone on a spaceship, and then forward to being on the spaceship, trying to figure out what he has to do to fulfill his mission, which is critical to the future of planet earth. 

My Impressions: Very creative and clever Sci-Fi novel.  I listened to it on audible and enjoyed the hypothetical story, the characters, the audible version, and the way it was told.  If you liked The Martian and the main character Mark Watney, you’ll like Project Hail Mary and the main character Ryland Grace.   They are both avatars of Andy Weir – practical engineers and scientists who systematically and dispassionately look at the most perplexing and seemingly hopeless problems to come up with solutions that I, a decidedly non-scientific thinker, could never imagine.  Not having a strong background in science and engineering, I couldn’t judge whether his logic and solutions indeed made sense, but if not, they fooled me. 

Project Hail Mary begins with Ryland Grace waking up, not knowing where he is, but slowly realizing that he’s strapped into a bed, alone in a spaceship, with two dead people strapped into beds near him, and he doesn’t know why.  The initial part of the book is him slowly getting pieces of his memory back to help him figure out, not only who he is, but what he is doing there, who are these other dead people and what it is he is supposed to be doing.  As his memory slowly comes back and he begins piecing things together, we are taken back to his life on planet earth before this strange space ship ride.  

The book bounces back and forth between Grace’s emerging memories of events prior to and leading up to finding himself alone on a space ship, and Grace sharing what he’s thinking, seeing, doing and problem solving on the space ship – figuring out how it runs, where it is, where it’s going and why.

Slowly we learn that he has been sent into space on a mission to find what may be a possible solution to the problem of our sun cooling rapidly, due to an infestation of a unique microbial bio-phenomenon called “astrophage.”  If the cooling of the sun by astrophage is not reversed, planet earth itself will cool over the next several decades enough to endanger most current life, bring on another ice-age, and perhaps eventual death of all life on earth.  So Grace is on a pretty important mission, and as the book is named, he and this mission are a last desperate attempt by a Manhattan Project-like effort to find a solution to this problem.

There are several amazing things that Weir includes in the book.  This hypothetical bio-phenomenon offers hints at the potential of fusion as an energy source.  Also, astrophage itself is vulnerable to another microbial bio-phenomenon which Grace names taumoeba, for reasons explained in the book.  Taumoeba can be and is, both a friend and an enemy, depending on context, and Grace has to figure out and test the properties, strengths and weaknesses of each of these two bio-phenomena, which are key to his mission.

Perhaps most interesting is that Grace, alone in his spaceship trying to figure out his mission and role, finds that he is being approached by another space vehicle, and we are treated to an inter-stellar/extra-terrestrial cross-species communication experience, as Grace and the being in the other space vehicle overcome numerous obstacles and differences in their make-ups to communicate and eventually work together. Grace names the other being Rocky (for reasons he explains in the book) and Grace learns that Rocky is on a similar mission from his planet in a different solar system, also under threat from their star cooling, due to the influence of astrophage. 

The collaboration process and the various efforts, solutions, challenges, catastrophes they face together become the focus of the second half of the book, while we continue to regularly revisit Grace’s memories which help him (and us) understand how and why he was put on a space ship and launched on this mission of such importance.  It is enjoyable and interesting to read about the international Manhattan project-like effort to save planet earth – and it all sort-of makes sense.  Grace himself is an interesting character in this drama – a sort of nerdy everyman – a humble one-time middle-school science  teacher – who somehow finds himself in the center  of arguably the most important project in the history of the world.

Between these two settings – the leading minds on earth trying to solve the cooling of the sun, and Grace alone on his space-ship with an extra-terrestrial, we are treated to practical example after practical example of the scientific method being used to solve problems, explore possibilities, solve problem, question results, and move on to the next steps.  In this, Project Hail Mary is similar to The Martian.  But then Weir introduces the extraterrestrial, another intelligent and sentient being, he gives us insights into our own limitations and strengths and unique qualities as human beings.  

Rocky is made of different stuff, has 5 legs which also serve as hands, and has many capabilities that we don’t have. As Grace and Rocky connect and get to know each other, they question each other about each other’s worlds, cultures, values etc. And we are introduced to a VERY different versions of sentient creatures which have adapted to a different environment.  For example, in Rocky’s culture, one must always be watched and protected when sleeping, because in sleeping Rocky and his species essentially go completely catatonic and inert, and are vulnerable to a whole host of problems.  They couldn’t live in our atmosphere, nor we in there’s.    Rocky shares with Grace how they get their energy – what we would call calories – very different from us.  Rocky and Grace both believe (and I assume this reflects what Weir believes is worth considering) that life in various solar systems, and perhaps galaxies, has evolved from a common source….which Grace and Rocky believe may explain the similarities – as tenuous as they may seem – between how the human and Rocky’s species evolved.  And how astrophage and taumoeba have evolved.  

Over the course of the book, and especially at the end, we see a transformation in Ryland Grace as he rises to the challenges he finds himself confronting, and truly takes his responsibilities seriously. There is a moral development piece to this book which simmers in the background, until the end. But it is definitely worth mentioning.  

Fascinating book – highly recommended as a combination scientist-engineer’s and astrophysicist’s Sci- Fi fantasy which has a fascinating and believable human element.  

Why this book:  Selected by my literature reading group – strongly advocated for by Janar.

Summary in 3 sentences:  A man hunting out in the outback in South Texas stumbles upon a number of shot up vehicles, a bunch of dead men and a satchel full of money – and figures out quickly that this was a drug gang war, and so absconds with the money, expecting to never get caught. That sets off multiple bad guys trying to find him to recover the money, and a lot of killing which includes not just bad guys, but no shortage of innocent bystanders. Meanwhile throughout the story, the local Sheriff, the key protagonist in the book, is on the trail of both the man who found the money, as well as the multiple bad guys who are committing murders and mayhem in their efforts to track him down and recover what they believe is rightfully theirs. 

My Impressions:  I listened to this book, so my impressions are colored (positively!) by the excellent rendition the audible reader gave representing the various characters in the book.  The story takes place entirely in South Texas, and nearly all of the characters are working class, down-to-earth Texans and their voices and accents bespeak the region and their origins.  I could also argue that the book is largely about small-town Texas and its people, and how their culture of simple courage and hard work is being corrupted by the influence of the traffickers who are moving through their world, who do not share their values – in fact whose values directly oppose those of the people who settled and live in that space. 

There are two main characters who represent both sides of this cultural divide: Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and narco trafficker hit man Anton Chighurh.  Sheriff Bell’s voice and perspective begin each chapter – he is a WWII veteran (the book takes place late 70s/early 80s) whose grand father had been a sheriff and whose influence led to Ed Tom becoming a sheriff – which at the time of the story, he’d been for nearly 30 years. Chigurh is an extremely intelligent, cold-blooded, socio-pathic killer, who works for the big money players in the narcotics trade. He has no qualms at all about killing anyone who might compromise him or his purpose, and he does ALOT of killing in No County for Old Men. 

A third major character is Llewelyn Moss, who early in the book, happens upon the scene of a shootout between rival drug gangs.  He finds numerous dead bodies, a van full of heroin, as well as an unclaimed valise full of over $2 million in cash.  He believes he’s hit the jackpot – takes the money, and makes a plan for himself and his young wife to disappear and live happily ever after.  Obviously, it turns out to be not that easy, as the “bad guys” are pretty resourceful and intent on not only finding that money,  but also in punishing the individual who took it. 

In the midst of all this, Sheriff Bell is trying to solve the crime of so many dead bodies in his jurisdiction, with very few clues to go on – though it’s clear to him that it’s all drug related – no IDs on the bodies, mostly Mexican, lots of bullet holes in the vehicles without valid license plates.  And then more bodies start turning up as he tries to put the pieces of the puzzle together. 

Meanwhile Chigurh is on the trail of the money and is tracking Moss, as is separately, one of the fat cats who is now out his $2million plus.  Bodies keep piling up, while Sheriff Bell is a couple of steps behind.  We are seeing the situation evolve through Moss’s eyes,  and separately Chigurh’s, as well as the Sheriff’s.  As we accompany the Sheriff on his investigation, we already know the answers to his questions, because we are privy to Chigurh’ and Moss’s thoughts and actions.   Pretty much all the way to the end. 

Both Bell and Chigurh are great characters – Chigurh is extremely intelligent in a diabolical way, consistent in his evil logic and actions, and extremely effective at covering his tracks.  Sheriff Bell is very sharp in a practical, everyman/commons sensical way, and figures things out pretty quickly.  Sheriff Bell is also a man of principle and a dedicated public servant,  who cares for the people in his community, his friends, and his country.  He has seen a lot of bad in his 30 years on the job, but also a lot of good and has empathy and appreciation for the hard working, poor people in his community. Moss is likewise a good man, practical and smart,  but not as smart as he thinks he is. 

We see in the book that it’s hard to defeat an enemy who has no moral scruples.  Sheriff Bell shares his frustration at what his job has evolved into, what his county and South Texas have become as a result of the drug and gang wars, and what America’s new generation has become.  Chigurh  has no such concerns.  Moss is basically a good guy, who is just trying to take advantage of what looks like a really good break, at stumbling upon this ill-gotten money.  In some ways, this story reminds me of the movie A Simple Plan with Billy Bob Thornton

I can’t say that I enjoyed all the evil and killing in this book, but the story is very well told.  I thought the story had almost religious overtones – Chigurh is the devil, and Sheriff Bell is a good man, struggling to believe in a God who would let someone like Chigurh do what he does, struggling to have faith in a good God when so much evil seems to continue to occur, and to go unpunished.   The battle between Good and Evil taking place in South Texas is difficult to watch, especially when Evil seems to have so much power and so much influence.  Sheriff Bell has the unpleasant feeling that perhaps Evil is winning.

I really liked Sheriff Bell’s voice and insights at the beginning of each chapter.  He represented the practical wisdom and humility that is the best in the American character.  He is quite vocal about how important his marriage is in his life and how much he admired and needed his wife Loretta.  It was easy to empathize with him when he expressed his despair, to admire him for his courage, and to like him as a protagonist in this story.

I haven’t seen the movie yet – but I will.  I hear it’s quite good and I want to see how Hollywood portrays these interesting characters. 

Why this book: I first heard of Willa Cather a few years ago when I was at a conference chatting about books with a woman from Nebraska, who mentioned that when she was in school, everyone had to read Willa Cather.  I had never heard of Willa Cather, though I was born in Nebraska and my parents are from Nebraska, so I was intrigued. Then a few years ago, I read Cather’s Pulitzer prize winning One of Ours, and have been wanting to read more of her since. 

Summary in 3 Sentences: My Antonia is a novel that takes place mostly on the prairies of Nebraska in the final two decades of the 19th century, and is told as a reflection of a man who had grown up initially on a farm and then in a small town there, looking back on his youth, and in particular at stories surrounding his friend Antonia Shimerda. The book is more about life in rural Nebraska prior to the end of the 19th century, with the focus on the lives, trials and tribulations of our narrator’s close friends and family, and especially Antonia. At the end of the book, the author switches back to the time when he is relating his story, and returns to the town of his youth and shares with us his impressions, his reunions, and his nostalgia. 

My Impressions: Wonderful book written in 1918 by a woman who grew up on the prairies of Nebraska, conveying a sense of what life was like in the late 19th century in small rural farming communities on the great plains.  My Antonia deserves its reputation as classic of early 20th century literature.  It depicts a lifestyle and a time in America long gone – when life was simple, hard, there was a strong social contract in the community, no real social safety net other than what neighbors, relatives, friends would be willing to contribute to help people out.  And it is beautifully written. 

My Antonia reminded me of the writing of Ivan Doig – a male voice describing life of farmers and ranchers and working class people in rural Montana and Wyoming.  In particular his book The Whistling Season comes to mind.  I was also reminded of the writing and life of Laura Ingalls Wilder – her Little House  books describe a similar setting in time and place,  but whereas Wilder’s books are written for children or young adults, My Antonia and Cather’s other books about life on the prairie are written for a more mature reader. 

My Antonia begins in the late 1880s and is told in the first person as a retrospective by Jim Burden, a man looking back on his youth.  He begins when he was sent by train from Virginia to Nebraska after his parents died, to be raised by his grandparents on their farm.  Arriving on the same train that brought him to the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, is the Shimerda family, a poor family from Bohemia (what is now the western part of the Czech Republic)  who speak no English and are arriving to work a farm they had just purchased from a previous immigrant from Bohemia.  One of the children in that family is Antonia, a girl just a few years older than Jim, and their farm is not far from the farm where Jim Burden grows up with his grandparents. 

Jim tells his story about life on the farm, about his grandparents and his interactions with the much poorer neighboring Shimerda family over the years of his youth.  His friendship with the young Antonia gradually grew as they played and interacted as children, but took a leap forward when Antonia’s mother asked Jim to teach her English.    Antonia was a good student, energetic, actively, quickly and playfully learning English, and Jim truly enjoys her company, and as he gets older is smitten with her – from a distance.   Antonia and her siblings did not go to school – rather they were needed to work on the farm from which the family struggled to make a living.

The book covers the trajectory of Jim’s and Antonia’s lives converging and diverging, as they mature over the years into teenagers and young adults, sometimes going for long periods without seeing each other.   But Jim has a strong crush on Antonia who is clearly a remarkable girl, who becomes a remarkable young woman – healthy and strong, resilient in the face of hardship, sensitive in the face of difficulties and tragedy, yet still upbeat, positive, and determined.   Additionally we get to know other interesting characters in the small town of Black Hawk, and we experience small-town Nebraskan life, as Jim’s grandparents move off the farm and into town, and Antonia eventually takes a job working as a housekeeper for a well-to-do family in town. We learn of the prejudices that town’s people have toward “country girls” and immigrants in general, and how “hired girls” and immigrants stick together and support each other.  Jim describes the country girls who had  helped to “break up the wild sod, learned so much from life, from poverty, from their mothers and grandmothers” as much more self-confident and interesting than the coddled and protected girls who had grown up in town.  

There are many examples of immigrant families in My Antonia, who responded to the Homestead Act of the 1860s and moved West to get free land in exchange for working it for a number of years.  These Swedes, Norwegians, Bohemians, Germans developed their own communities to help each other deal with how difficult life was in these early days on the prairies.   We learn of the small town prejudices, the strict and conventional morality, as well as the simple joys and sense of community that people find when there are not many distractions from simply working, eating, sleeping.  When things got hard, people had to simply deal them, but neighbors and friends always seemed ready to chip in as best they could to alleviate the worst of suffering. 

Eventually, Jim goes off to college and a career that takes him away from Black Hawk, and Antonia and her girl friends also go their separate ways, and the idyllic time of their youth fades as the demands of adulthood take hold.  At the conclusion of the book, Jim return to Black Hawk and we learn how the lives of Antonia and other characters in the book have changed and evolved, along with the country they live in.  But it is clear in Jim’s narrative that Antonia was the original love of his life, and his story is a nostalgic look at not only his relationship to her, but also at the life they had lived on their farms and in Black Hawk, Nebraska.

My Antonia was published in 1918, and the story ends prior to the advent of WW1. 

The Writing and descriptions. Willa Cathers’s descriptions of places and nature have been described as like reading a painting.  There are some beautiful evocative passages in her descriptions of the prairie where she grew up.  There is a strong Buddhist sense in her descriptions of nature. A few examples:

I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen.  I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more.  I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it come to one, it comes as naturally as sleep. p 12

(At sunset) The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows. the whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero’s death – heroes who died young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day.  p22

The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify – it was like the light of truth itself.  When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snow roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said: “This is reality, whether you like it or not.  All those frivolities of summer, the light and the shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.”  It was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of summer.  p 85

Willa Cather – After reading My Antonia, I listened to several pieces on Youtube about Willa Cather and read what Wikipedia had to say about her.  She was a major force in American Literature in the first half of the 20th century and lived a fascinating life.  She grew up in Red Cloud, Nebraska, which is represented by the town of Black Hawk in My Antonia.  She eventually attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, then moved to Pittsburg and then New York City, and became the main editor of McCure’s magazine before she wrote her first novel. My Antonia is one part of what has become known as Cather’s Prairie Trilogy which includes O Pioneers! (1913) and The Song of the Lark (1915.)  Her novel One of Ours about a Nebraskan farm boy who goes off to fight in Europe in WW1 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1922, and she wrote several other highly regarded and successful novels, which are not as well known today as her Prairie Trilogy.  She died at age 73 in 1948 of breast cancer and its complications. 

Why this book Over the years, I’ve heard this book referred to and praised a lot – by Tim Ferriss among others.  Also I’ve read and enjoyed several of Pressfield’s historical novels, as well as his Warrior Ethos (reviewed here,) and we recently hosted him in an on-line  discussion of his book Virtues of War (reviewed  here.)  I really admired the man, as he humbly shared how he wrote such a fascinating book about Alexander the Great in Alexander’s voice – in the first person. The War of Art explains the process he shared with us in that session.    I’ve had The War of Art on my shelf for quite a while, so I figured it was time to read it and see what Pressfield has to say about creativity.

Summary in 3 sentences: In The War of Art  Pressfield is sharing his wisdom after a lifetime of struggling to overcome simple human impulses to avoid the hard work of venturing out beyond oneself to engage in a creative endeavor.  He anthropomorphizes “Resistance” as this human impulse to avoid the hard work of creating; he encourages us to fight it as an implacable enemy who never is completely defeated and is always ready through subterfuge to undermine our best efforts.  Finally he shares with us how to feed and cultivate our “muse” as the connection between our inner creative selves and something Pressfield doesn’t claim to understand, but which he believes is bigger than us and to which we must connect, in order to open up our creative channels. 

My Impressions:  There is a lot of content, wisdom and insight in this short work – only 165 pages with large print. In this review, I’ll try to give a few highlights that may inspire you to pick it up – especially if you the reader, have ever struggled to lose yourself in a creative endeavor. It is structured in short, readable, almost aphoristic chapters, that make it easier to absorb his esoteric concepts in small bites.  The style reminds me a bit of how Legacy by James Kerr is written – easy to pick up, open it at a random spot, and grab a quick bite of insight and inspiration. 

The War of Art is written in three parts, and each of these parts is broken up into short, one-to-three page chapters, and the titles of those chapters give us a heads up as to the point he’ll be making.  The three parts build on each other, the culminating section – Part 3 Beyond Resistance – is in my view, his piece de resistance.  The chapter titles themselves give a sense for the wisdom Pressfield is imparting in each part and in the book. 

Part 1 Resistance: This chapter sets up the book, and makes “Resistance” into a conscious, sneaky, clever and diabolical enemy intent on keeping us from doing what we know we need and want to do.  Treating “Resistance” as a personified enemy, who we must be willing to fight continuously, is a perspective he offers to help us do what we may be struggling to get ourselves to do. Pressfield is open and unabashed about his own battles with Resistance,  and is not reticent about describing the battles he’s won and lost. 

Some of the chapter titles in this part include: Resistance and Criticism, Resistance and Self-Doubt, Resistance and Victimhood, Resistance and Procrastination, Resistance and Rationalization, Resistance Recruits Allies, Resistance is Most Powerful at the Finish line, Resistance and Choice of Mate.   

A few quotes from “Resistance:”

• Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the un-lived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
• Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt.  Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work. p7
• Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. p9
• Remember our rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. p 40

Part 2: Combatting Resistance. In this part, Pressfield makes the distinction between the Amateur and the Professional  – noting that to be serious about what one is doing, one must be willing to commit to fight Resistance, in order to open the door to one’s muse, and keep it open. Resistance will always be there like a dormant virus, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike.  Amateurs compromise with and accommodate Resistance and give it its head.  That’s ok, but they are not Pros.  To be a true Professional is to commit seriously to one’s art and to keeping Resistance at bay – to never let it gather momentum.  

Some of the chapter titles in this part include: Professionals and Amateurs, What a Writer’s Day feels like, For Love of the Game, a Professional is Patient, a Professional Seeks Order, a Professional Acts in the Face of Fear, a Professional Accepts no Excuses, a Professional plays it as it lays, a Professional does not Show off, a Professional dedicates Himself to Mastering Technique, a Professional does not Hesitate to Ask for Help, a Professional does not take Failure (or Success) Personally, a Professional Reinvents Himself.  

A few quotes from “Combatting Resistance:” 

• The amateur plays for fun.  The professional plays for keeps. p 62
• What’s important is the work. That’s the game I have to suit up for.  That’s the field on which I have to leave everything I’ve got.  p 65 
• The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it. p 73
• Resistance outwits the amateur with tho oldest trick in the book: it uses his own enthusiasm against him….The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare. p75
• The professional identifies with her consciousness and her will, not with the matter that her consciousness and will manipulate to serve her art…. Madonna does not identify with “Madonna.”  Madonna employs “Madonna.” p86

Part 3: Beyond Resistance.  In this part Pressfield acknowledges the mystery and wonder about where creative inspiration and insight come from – and this part has a quasi-mystical tone to it.  The rest of the book is basically a build up to and foundation for this part – Part 3 is the essence of his message.  Understanding and combatting Resistance are only worth the effort if one can find and nurture one’s muse.   He notes that most mammals, humans included, identify themselves by either their rank within a hierarchy or by their connection to a territory, and he uses the term “territory” in a broad way.  He says that artists must be territorial, noting that “For the artist to define himself hierarchically is fatal.”

Some of the chapter titles in this part include:  Approaching the Mystery, Invoking the Muse (Part 1,)  Invoking the Muse (Part 2,) Invoking the Muse (Part 3,) the Magic of Making a Start, the Magic of Keeping Going, Life and Death, the Ego and the Self,  Fear,  the Authentic Self,  Territory versus Hierarchy, the Artist and the Hierarchy, the Supreme Virtue, the Fruits of our Labor, and his concluding chapter, the Artist’s Life.

Some quotes from “Beyond Resistance:”

• When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose. p108
• The last thing I do before I sit down to work is say my prayer to the Muse. I say it out loud, in absolute earnest.  p110
• This is why artists are modest. They know they’re not doing the work; they’re just taking dictation. p127
• Here is what I think. I think angels make their home in the Self, while Resistance has its seat in the Ego.  p136
• In other words, the hack writes hierarchically.  He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, What do I myself want to write? p 152
• We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.  p 161

Loved this short book. It gives a different and insightful perspective about why many/most of us often choose the path of least resistance, and don’t fulfill many of our life’s dreams. It challenges all of us to examine whether we are, or have been “pros” or “amateurs.”  It challenges the reader to find his/her muse, to feed and nourish and sustain her, and to live by her guidance.  Our muse, Pressfield would claim,  is our better self.  A worthy challenge indeed.  

Why this book:  In a great podcast interview Tim Ferriss did with Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) Mike Rowe strongly recommended the entire John D. MacDonald Travis McGee series.   This recommendation was subsequently reinforced by a friend who had read all of MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels and said he envied me the opportunity to read these for the first time. so I  picked up and  read The Deep Blue Good-bye (my review of it here)  and found it a unique pleasure for a mature reader.  I was recently looking for something light, fun and distracting to read, so decided to return to MacDonald and picked up A Purple Place for Dying, my second Travis McGee novel. It won’t be my last.  

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Travis McGee accepts an offer to fly out from his home in Southern Florida to the Southwest (state not specified) to meet with a woman to discuss helping her recoup money that she was convinced her husband had stolen or was hiding from her before she divorced him.  McGee was not inclined to accept the work, but before he decides, the woman is murdered.  His better judgment tells him to go back home and leave this to local authorities, but his outrage at how it was done, his curiosity, and his sense that he could contribute to finding out how, why, and by whom she was murdered seduced him to stay and look into it, and pretty soon he is VERY involved.  

My Impressions:  If All the King’s Men, or Angle of Repose are literary gourmet meals, then Travis McGee novels, to include A Purple Place for Dying,  represent gourmet Fast Food.  A Purple Place for Dying is a who-done-it mystery novel – one of the 21  books in MacDonald’s Travis McGee series, written in the first person voice of Travis McGee.   McGee might be described as a cross between Jimmy Buffett and Jim Rockford (the James Garner character in The Rockford Files TV series of a few decades ago.) 

Travis McGee is something of a boat bum in his mid/late 30s/early 40s, who lives on a yacht he won in a poker game and which he named “The Busted Flush.”  He claims to be enjoying his early retirement in installments.  He accepts work when he runs out of cash – and his specialty is helping people recoup money they’ve lost unfairly or through some chicanery.  If/when he succeeds, his cut is half of what is left after his expenses.

It’s easy to like Travis McGee.  He is un-pretentious, easy-going, un-ambitious, non-materialistic, suffers no fools, is principled and compassionate.  He has a good head, a good heart, and the urges of a healthy male in his 30s/early 40s and he is respectful and solicitous of the women he meets.   His judgment and decision-making balance these qualities in a way that most men would envy.  At least I do.

In A Purple Place for Dying McGee reports the murder of his potential client and is warned by the local sheriff to stay out of this case – since the woman’s husband was a man of significant power, wealth and  influence in the region, and the sheriff had political ambitious.  But McGee can’t resist – he gets to know the first obvious suspect – the woman’s husband who knew she was having an affair with a local professor.  Strangely the murder is set up to create the impression that it didn’t happen – that the woman and her lover simply left and disappeared to live happily ever after (disappearing was easier back then.) That McGee witnessed the murder was clearly not part of the plan.  We are with Travis McGee as he goes through his process of determining who might have had a motive to commit this murder and hide it, and we’re along for the ride in his independent sleuthing, in spite of the warning by the local sheriff.    Without giving up the story, I’ll just say that  his investigation goes down some surprising rabbit holes, introduces us to some interesting characters, and the book concludes with a number of startling turns, a few more murders, and Travis McGee is involved up to his neck.  Couldn’t put it down.

A bit about the Travis McGee novels and John MacDonal:

The Travis McGee novels were written in the early sixties, the context is late 1950s/early 1960s, when America was a simpler place than it is today – with most adult men having served in WW2 or the Korean War, no 24 hour news cycle keeping people informed but also enraged, concerned, anxious.  The structures and rules of society were simple and well known – not necessarily better, but not as contentious as today.  So part of the appeal of the Travis McGee novels is that the context takes the reader back to  (at least on the surface) a simpler America.  MacDonald writes very well – he is clever and easy to read, and through the voice of Travis McGee, MacDonald shares his keen and (I thought) interesting insights about American culture, men and women, people in general, and how they get along – or don’t.

John D. MacDonald got an MBA from Harvard just prior to WW2, joined the army in 1940 and served throughout WWII, leaving the army at the end of the war  as a Lt Col.  But rather than jump into the post-war race to join a corporation, develop a career and accumulate wealth, he chose to become an impoverished writer of pulp fiction, who once said about his writing, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize that I would pay them!”  In 1962, he was named Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and in 1980 received a National Book Award.  He sadly died at the young age of 70 in 1986.

A few quotes that I highlighted while reading the book that may give the reader a sense for MacDonald’s style and perspective. Unless otherwise noted, these are Travis McGee’s thoughts: 

When you can keep moving, when you have to keep moving, you can keep a lot of things at arm’s length. But when you stop, they come at you. p 30

Speaking of students he observed at the local college:  They all seemed to have an urgency about them, that strained, harried trimester look.  It would cram them through sooner, and feed them out into the corporations and tract houses, breeding and hurrying, organized for all the time and money budgets, binary systems, recreation funds, taxi transports, group adjustments , tenure, constructive hobbies. They were being structured to life on the run, and by the time they would become what is now known as senior citizens, they could fit nicely into planned communities where recreation is scheduled on such a tight and competitive basis that they could continue to run, plan organize, until, falling at last into silence, the grief therapist would gather them in, rosy their cheek, close the box and lower them to the only rest they had ever known.  p 48-49.

Education is something which should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor.   It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of man’s reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why?……A devoted technician is seldom an educated man. He can be a useful man, a contented man, a busy man.  But he has no more sense of the mystery and wonder and paradox of existence than does one of those chickens fattening itself for the mechanical plucking, freezing and packaging. p 49

He had a chauffeur’s hat, a big belly, a damp cigar end, little gray pebbles for eyes, and an air of petty authority.  p70

There was a tomcat tension between us, and I had the feeling that if we could each give and take one good smack in the mouth, we might get along fine from then on.  p 133

I had one of those strange moments of unreality, that old what -am-I doing-here feeling. p137

Jass Yeoman speaking:  “They stood in line for it, boy. They always do. Ring the bell and the suckers come on the run.  In this world you either take, or you’re tooken. P143

I had seen him on a hundred corners in a dozen cities, staring at me with a combination of defiance and stupidity, standing with an indolent tomcat grace.  p 145

Maybe the entire murder arrangement was like one of those bloody cinema farces the British do so well.  Everything goes wrong, and bodies keep falling out of the wrong closets.  p 150

Speaking of suicide: This was the monstrous selfishness of self-destruction. Somebody else has to pick up the pieces.  p154

I felt an inexplicable depression. This was the foolish end of all the foolish things, in a purple place for dying.  p 199

Why this Book: Selected by my literature reading group, based on 1. strong recommendations from a couple who’d read it, and 2. our group had loved Towles book A Gentleman in Moscow. Several had also read his Rules of Civility and spoken highly of it. 

Summary in 2 Sentences:  The Lincoln Highway was  the first trans-continental highway in the US, and the book begins in 1954 when a group of young men decide to travel the highway from Nebraska to California.  However it turns out that each of the young men have different agendas for making the trip, and as things evolve, these different agendas define the characters, define the trip on which they have embarked, and create a much different adventure than any of them had counted on.  

My Impressions:  An enjoyable, easy and interesting book to read – I’ve described it as “comfort food” reading; Towles style is engaging, and the characters are interesting, believable and fun to follow.   The perspective changes with every chapter – the chapter titles are the names of the characters from whose perspective the story is told in that chapter. Only three of the characters tell their story in first person; the others are told in the third person with a “God’s eye” view.  This varied narrative technique is at first a bit awkward, but as I got used to it, it provided a nice change.

The story begins with Emmett, an 18 year old young man returning home to his farm from Reform school/juvenile work camp to which he was sent for having inadvertently killed another young man in a fight.  Emmet’s father has died, his younger brother Billy had been cared for by Sally, a young woman on a neighboring farm, and the farm is about to be foreclosed.  Emmett has no intention of being a farmer, signs the farm over to the bank and is about to embark with brother Billy on a trip to California in Emmett’s Studebaker to find their mother, when two of Emmett’s pals show up, having escaped from the reform school where they were Emmett’s pals, and they decide to accompany Emmett on the trip. Emmett reluctantly agrees, believing he has put the necessary caveats in place – but then things start going a bit awry.  

Now the group leaving Morgen Nebraska is no longer Billy and Emmett, but three young men and a boy, and Emmett begins to lose control of his careful and deliberate and fairly well thought-out plan.   The trip (and the book) then embarks on a variety of branches and sequels from the original plan, and it reminds me of the old insight:   Do you want to hear Gold laugh?  Tell him your plans! 

Key Characters

• Emmett A practical quiet and thoroughly competent and honest young man, who is confident in himself and his pragmatic abilities to plan and get things done.
• Duchess A charismatic character full of charm and self confidence but who sees immediate advantages without thinking through long term possibilities, risks or consequences.  Basically honest and honorable, with a rather primitive sense of justice and fairness, but a dream of getting rich the easy way.
• Billy  An eight year old boy, a precocious and idealistic dreamer, always asking questions, who trusts and believes in the good in people.
• Woolly – A dreamy distracted type who has almost no common sense, but not an evil or selfish bone in his body.  Loves to listen to commercials on the radio.
• Ulysses  An African American man, a loner, honest and good,  who befriends and protects Billy.  Ulysses is adrift in America, riding the rails since returning from WW2 and finding his wife and child gone, and he has no idea where they are or how to find them. He is running from the sadness at his decision to leave them and go to war. 
• The Pastor A so-called man of God who uses the scripture to justify whatever he can get away with.  A conniver whose one goal is to feather his own nest.  
• Sally A confident young woman who insists on order and cleanliness, always insists on the reasonable and practical solution, religious in her values, and confident in her prejudices. She abhors chaos and demands an explanation for anything that is out of the ordinary.  Her mothering instinct is completely at odds with the spontaneous chaos that follows the four boys.  
• Other significant characters who don’t get their own chapters would be  Townhouse – an African American pal of Emmet’s who they seek out in Harlem; Sister Agnes, who ran the Christian orphanage where Duchess went to school; , The Professor, who wrote the book that inspired Billy and Ulysses; Dennis, Wooly’s brother-in-law who is a self-righteous and ambitious social climber;  Sarah Wooly’s sister, who recognizes Woolly’s strengths and weaknesses and loves him. 

The real charm in this book is in the diversity and idiosyncrasies of the characters, as we get to know them.  Each of them remind me of someone I have known.   They are interesting, funny, frustrating,  have notable strengths balanced by notable flaws – distinctly human. The Pastor is perhaps the only character without redeeming virtues. 

In the course of the branches and sequels that emerge from the original plan to drive across America on the Lincoln Highway, there are some wonderful stories told, and the characters have some memorable conversations.  A few examples: 

• Emmett talks about how his father always used “mollifying” words, to reduce the seriousness of whatever calamities were befalling him or his family. Emmett never trusted those mollifying words. Things were always worse than his father made them out to be. 
• Emmett didn’t like preachers because “half the time it seemed like a preacher was trying to sell you something you didn’t need; and the other half, he was selling you something you already had.”  p126
• Emmett and Billy  “Emmett figured rules were a necessary evil. They were an inconvenience to be abided for having the privilege of living in an orderly world.  But when it came to rules, Billy wasn’t simply an abider. He was a stickler.”  p145
• Woolly loved the Dictionary, but hated the Thesaurus. “How was one to communicate an idea to another person if when one had something to say, one could choose from ten different words for every word in a sentence?” p 290  It appalled him that the same event could be referred to as a fire, a blaze, or a conflagration.
• Duchess’s description of Howard Johnson’s: “The cuisine was a gussied-up version of what you’d find in a diner and the defining characteristic of the clientele was that with a single glance you could tell more about them than you wanted to know.” p180   
• Duchess’s insight that “when circumstance conspire to spoil your carefully laid plans with an unexpected reversal, the best thing you can do is take credit as quickly as possible” p406
• Ulysses to the Professor: “I believe everything of value in this life must be earned…because those who are given something of value without having earned it are bound to squander it.” p421
• The Professor: “Then surely, I am among the squanderers. One who has lived his life in the third person and the past tense. So let me start by acknowledging that anything I say to you, I say with the utmost humility.” p422
• Woolly’s word for not noticing or overlooking something important or beautiful an “undersight.”  p415
• Woolly’s distinction between his brother-in-law Dennis who felt morally obligated to “sit you down and set you straight,” and the Professor whose kind demeanor indicated that he was “not the sort who would want to sit you down and set you straight…not the sort to hurry you along because time was money, or of the essence or a stitch in nine, or what have you.”  p417

In considering my favorite characters in the book I’d begin with Duchess – a quintessential “artful dodger,” such a clever showman and extravert, trying to be honorable, but unable to overcome his dream to ultimately be the big cheese on easy street.  Next I’d list Ulysses, so sincere, so strong, so powerful and suffering so.  Then the Professor, old, wise and sincere, ready to take a chance and learn, whose humble efforts as an academic had made such an impression on Billy and certainly many others. Then Billy, who found his ideals in the Professor’s book of heroes and did all he could to live up to those ideals. who saw the best in people, but was ready to act when he was wrong.  And finally Woolly, probably somewhere on the spectrum, but good, innocent, well- meaning, wise in his own impractical way – reminds me of “the fool on the hill” in the famous Beatles song.  

Not to be overlooked in describing the merits of this book is Towles writing – smooth as butter, easy to read and follow. Additionally there is a nice retrospective to America in the early 1950s, not long after WWII and just after the Korean War.   America coming back to life again, full of confidence and possibilities, but also facing different versions of the challenges we face today – people struggling, not trusting nor being trustworthy, many taking whatever shortcuts they can find, and others doing their best to be good citizens,  trying to find their way in a confusing world, where things just don’t seem to go as planned – like a trip across America on The Lincoln Highway. . 

Why this book:  I have been very interested in brain function, health, and dreams for much of my life. This book was strongly recommended by my friend Mike Gosh.  It is related to other books I’ve recently read, to include: Descartes Error,   7 1/2 Lesssons about the Brain, and The Intention Experiment.

Summary in 4 Sentences:  The two authors of When Brains Dream are scientific dream researchers who chose to write a book on dreaming in language and style that would appeal to the educated layperson, and in it, they explore the mythology  about dreams and the history of more recent scientific research into the dream experience.  Scientific research has found some validity in conventional wisdom about dreams and dreaming, but also much that doesn’t necessarily or certainly not always stand up to scientific scrutiny.  The authors go into all of the things that I find interesting about dreams and they introduce me to other aspects which were unfamiliar to me.   The authors make a clear attempt to be fair in describing different theories about the purpose and sources of dreams, and offer simple advice for how do deal with pathological sides of dreaming (nightmares, recurrent dreams PTSD) as well as how to most effectively use dreams to enhance one’s life. 

My Impressions:  Fascinating and thorough look at the phenomenon of dreaming for the educated layperson.  I listened to it rather than read it – it is a short read at 336 pages, and 9 hours to listen to it.  There is so much content in this short book, that it was sometimes difficult keep up with while listening to it.   It is a current (as of 2021) review of the state of research into various aspects of dreaming and the potential significance of dreaming to our lives.  In listening to it, the challenge was that with so much new information (for me) and content, I was unable to highlight or mark sections I would have liked to have returned to for a review.  That makes this review more difficult to write, given that there was so much new and I could only absorb and retain so much as I listened.   For someone who is really interested in exploring dreaming, I’d recommend reading the book, rather than listening to it – though I did truly enjoy the listening experience. I just wasn’t able to retain as much as I would have liked. 

Given that I don’t have a hard copy to review, I’ll simply list some of the topics and impressions I recall from listening to the book, that I found most interesting:

• History of theories of dreaming.  The authors look briefly at various theories that have existed in (mostly Western) cultures about dreaming over millennia, but explore in more depth the key researchers starting in the 18th century, continuing into the 19th and 20th centuries, with an emphasis on those best known – Freud and Jung – but also including many whose name and work were unfamiliar to me.  The most serious and scientific dream research took off in the mid 20th century with the “discovery” of REM sleep in the 1950s, and continues to this day.
• Why we dream.  They explore various theories about why we dream, the evolutionary and biological components, how dreaming may serve brain health as well as deal with unresolved issues in our conscious life, aid our memory functions and integrate disparate thoughts and experiences into our memories and consciousness. 
• Sleep.  They take a detour to explain and explore sleep itself – its purpose in health and wellness, the various stages of sleep and their purpose.  This is important because later they describe different kinds of dreams that we experience in different stages of sleep. Apparently, we dream in ALL stages of sleep, but those dreams we most remember normally occur in REM sleep.
• Hypnogogic dreaming.  This is the dreaming we do just as we’re falling asleep.  In my own case,  these little dreams are what tell me that I’m indeed falling asleep.  This a very different stage of dreaming from normal REM and non-REM sleep dreaming, and these dreams have their own characteristics and often can serve us differently.
• Dream Incubation.  They offer techniques for inducing dreams we would like to have in order to explore feelings or reactions to things that are occurring in our conscious life, or perhaps to help us solve a problem. That dreams sometimes open the door for the subconscious mind to help solve problems that are confounding us in our conscious lives has a long history, and the authors tell us how to increase the likelihood of effective dream incubation. 
• The “NEXTUP” model. The authors developed their own model to help explain the function of dreams.  Their  NEXTUP (Network EXploration To Understand Possibilities)  model is referred to frequently in discussing ideas about why we dream what we dream.  The NEXTUP model claims that the brain sorts through our its network of memories to help process, explain and understand the past and prepare for/predict the future. This model explains that “While dreaming, the brain identifies associations between recently formed memories (typically from the preceding day) and older, often only weakly related memories, and monitors whether the narrative it constructs from these memories induces an emotional response in the brain.” (from an article written by the two authors in The Scientist, available here.)  Whether there is an emotional response to a memory tells the brain whether a memory is significant.
• Meaning of dreams and dream content- theories  There are many and conflicting theories of what and how much meaning one should give to the content of dreams.  The standard answer is “It depends.” Their discussion of NEXTUP begins this discussion.  Sometimes dreams provide powerful input clearly relevant to our conscious lives. More often than not however, dreams are gibberish, a potpourri of random and crazy impressions and bizarre incidents that make little sense to us – and indeed, that characterizes most – but not all – of the dreams I remember.  The authors generally agree with the “widely held view that dreams reflect the dreamer’s current thoughts and concerns as well as recent salient experiences,” but they doubt that most dreams carry important messages or deserve careful interpretation.  This is a fruitful and fascinating discussion led by two scientists who’ve been exploring dreams and dreaming for decades. 
• Creativity and problem solving.  Related to dream incubation, the authors explore how dreams have enhanced creativity by being unconstrained by our daily prejudices and social conditioning, and therefore can open the door to solutions to problems or ideas that are somehow difficult to access when we are awake. He shares how a number of great inventions have their origins in the dreams of inventors, from Edison, to Einstein, and artistic creations from Dali to Paul McCartney.
• RBD -REM-sleep Behavioral Disorder – Most of us have a biological switch that makes us immobile or essentially paralyzed when we are in REM sleep. But this mechanism malfunctions for some people, and during a violent dream, people have been known to physically hurt themselves and/or others, acting out bizarre or violent dreams.  The authors explain what current science believes is happening here and what are some of the current treatments.
• Sleepwalking (somnambulism)  Another strange phenomenon in which the person shows qualities of being both asleep AND awake simultaneously. Again, they share what the science says about this state and the current state of treatments.
• Nightmares, PTSD, Narcolepsy – these are among the sleep dysfunctions that they explore in significant detail, as well as various therapies that have worked in helping people move beyond these challenges.  We all have nightmares – and their sources are varied. They also address recurring nightmares, and how these are often different from nightmares originating in PTSD, which have their own specific characteristics.   Narcolepsy is just falling asleep suddenly at inopportune times.  I learned a new term for nightmare: “dysphoric dreaming.”
• Lucid Dreaming – Because this has gotten so much attention in recent years, they spend a lot of time exploring the myths, science, reality, and controversy surrounding lucid dreaming, as well as the ongoing research.  They describe how there are different levels of lucid dreaming, from momentarily knowing that you are dreaming, to being consciously aware throughout a dream and being able to direct actions and ask questions of characters in one’s dream.   They claim that most of us are capable of developing the capacity to have some aspects of lucid dreaming with a certain amount of practice, and they provide guidance for how to become a lucid dreamer. One has to begin by training oneself to remember one’s dreams, and they provide guidance as to how.
• Telepathic, pre-cognitive and clairvoyant dreaming – Another fascinating topic associated with dreaming to which they give a lot of attention.  They discuss the controversy surrounding  the validity of telepathic dreaming, describing experiments that have been taking place for decades that convince these authors that, thru mechanisms unknown, other people can intentionally and telepathically impact other people’s dreams.  In fact I participated in an experiment like this when I was an undergraduate 50 years ago.  The authors describe The Grateful Dead experiment that gave evidence to support that there is something to it.  Regarding pre-cognitive and clairvoyant dreaming, the authors are skeptical – arguing (along w Gary Klein in his Sources of Power) that subconscious awareness of environmental clues probably have informed dreams that appear precognitive. One of the authors is a complete non-believer in the ESP of dreams; the other is skeptical but more open to the possibility. They both note that such metaphysical issues don’t lend themselves well to scientific experiments. 

When Brains Dream is a fascinating look at this aspect of our creative lives – in which, while we sleep, we create realities and activities that we could never imagine in our waking conscious lives.  The authors claim that the dreaming brain attempts to represent to us in different forms what has been and what might be in our lives – in the same way that artists – painters, composers, novelists attempt to create images that reflect aspects of our lives that we may be too preoccupied to see for ourselves.  . Dreams are puzzling indicators as to who we really are, beneath the masks we show to the world every day, and given how much of our lives we spend sleeping (and dreaming) it is a worthwhile topic to study. Given that the  authors offer and respect different perspectives and counter-theories to their own, and openly admit that there is so much that we still don’t know,  I have faith in what these authors present in When Brains Dream.

Why this book;  I was on a zoom discussion session and this book was mentioned and I was intrigued – so I bought it and read it. 

Summary in 3 sentences:  In this short book (135 pages) the author describes his experience tracking a lion in one of the game preserves in South Africa with two other expert trackers – even more experienced than he.  He uses the tracking experience as a metaphor to relate to our relationship to nature, to the wild and natural world in which we as human beings evolved, and which he notes still lives inside of us.  He describes how finding and following the track of the lion becomes a metaphor for finding one’s path in life.

My Impressions:  I loved this book.   There are only three characters on a one day “adventure” tracking a lion in one of the game preserves of South Africa.  The author introduced us to his two mentors in the world of tracking, and then takes us along on the adventure.  And as we walked the trails, searched for, found, lost, then found again signs of the lion they had heard howling the night before, we learn about the “art” of not only tracking but living in and as part of nature, part of the food chain, as both predator as well as prey, alert, listening with one’s whole body, following one’s intuitions, while also keeping one’s rational mind engaged.  It is a process of constant learning, accepting, deciding and living with those decisions.  Kinda like life – but more natural and somehow more alive than how most of us live. 

“I don’t know where we are going, but I know exactly how to get there” This enigmatic statement he says might be the motto of the great tracker.  It might also be the primary theme of this book. His focus is on process, not outcomes. 

His two mentors with whom he shares this adventure are Alex and Renias.  Alex he describes as white, grew up initially in wealth, and then as a young boy he had to live by his wits in poverty, becoming “one of the best trackers in southern Africa, ten years older than me, close enough to get into trouble together, old enough to guide me out of it. p2

 Renias, a native African, he describes as “to the bushveld what Laird Hamilton is to the surf of Hawaii.  He has a skill and know-how that is beyond anything that can be taught, an innate sense of how the environment works, laid down in the fertile learning grounds of childhood, (who) grew up hunting and gathering, in tune with the old ways.”   Renias, he says, “has achieved one of the hardest things to achieve in our time:  a freedom from judgment about how and who he should be.” p 9-10

In The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life, Varty  follows the tracks of the lion with his mentors, and in the process, he teaches us that in order to become fully human again, we need to reconnect with nature, our natural wild selves, which are the truly authentic versions of who we were born to be, before the chisels of civilized culture shaped us into the people our cultures and societies want us to be.  Many of us have lost touch with our “wild” selves which are often at odds with what our social programming wants us to be – and consequently, we live in that tension, and struggle to find our way. 

Varty’s bottom line message in this book – after all the metaphors which connect lion tracking to living in the modern world.  “Step off the superhighway of modern life and go quietly onto your own track.  Go to a new trail where you can hear the whisper of your wild self in the echoes of the forest.  Find the trail of something wild and dangerous and worthy of your fear and joy and focus.  Live deeply on your own inner guidance. There is nothing more healing than finding your gifts and sharing them. “ p 122

SOME GREAT QUOTES: Going back through this book and reviewing what I had highlighted re-inspired me.  So I include many of them in this review.  Scan them, get the gist of Varty’s message, and then read the book. And ask yourself –  What am I doing to stay in touch with my wild/natural self, and is it enough? 

-To Renias and Alex, the unknown is a discipline of wildness, and wildness is a relationship with aliveness.  Too much uncertainty is chaos, but too little is death. p 14 

-Nature does’t care about wealth or social position. It cares only about presence, one’s ability to read the signs, navigate the terrain, and translate the language of the wilderness. Nature is the great equalizer.p17

-No wild animal has ever participated in a “should.” p 18

-The art of the way the tracker sees is the way he can look at the thing he has seen a thousand times and always see something new. p 25

-Obsessed with perfection and doing it right , we want to go straight to the lion.  We don’t realize the significance of the path of first tracks, and how to be invested  in a discovery rather than an outcome. p25

-(We were ) in a wild place where few people will ever venture; where the environment conveys a nature deep within your own being.  p26

-Alex sits quietly beside me in the easy silence of old friendship.  p 27

-You cant think your way to a calling.  Finding what is uniquely yours requires more than rationality. You have to learn how your body speaks. You have to learn how you know what you know. You have to follow the inner tracks of your feelings, sensations, and instincts, the integrity and truth that are deeper than ideas about what you should do. You have to learn to follow a deeper, wiser, wilder place inside yourself. p30

-We are a part of nature, and inside each of us is a wild self that knows deeply what it is meant to do.  Inside each of us is a natural innate knowledge of why we are here. Tracking is a function of directing attention, bringing our awareness back to this subtle inner trail of the wild self, and learning to see its path. p31

-We lose ourselves in shoulds. Shoulds are full of traps – traps laid by society and your limited rules for yourself.  No wild animal has ever participated in a should.. What you know to do is deeper than that.  p31

-Attention shapes the direction of the tracker’s life.  We must turn our attention back to the wild self. p32

-Tracking is very much like learning a foreign language. Singe tracks are words.  p 39

-The rhino and the path he walked told me something different: don’t try to be someone, rather find the thing that is so engaging that it makes you forget yourself. p 41

-The track of the father is to find him within you. To find what he gave you and what he didn’t give you. You must use both sides.  p42

-Renias knows the instrument of the body as wild and natural and full of instinctual wisdom.  He knows to think but also to feel.  He uses the way this body feels moving on the track to feel the lion….we have been disconnected from our instincts.  Bringing attention back to the landscape of the body allows you to find the trail of the wild self.  p44

-Joseph Campbell said, “If you can see your whole life’s path laid out then it’s not your life’s path.” p47

-I had to learn to be in the process of transformation, not trying to be transformed. You can’t skip past creating to the creation.  p 48

-Obsessed with perfection and doing it right, we want to go straight to the “lion.”  We don’t realize the significance of the path of first tracks and how to be invested in a discovery, rather than an outcome.  p49

-Here the margins for error are small, and the way one behaves in a high-risk situation is critical.  Yet for all of us, a life with no sharp edges would be worse.  The hazard of modern times is the danger of no danger. p 51

-Seeing someone who simply doesn’t have the social programming you do is profound, because it forces you to see that a huge part of what you might think of as “this is how I am” or “this is what you do” is not you at all, but patterns of behavior and thinking you have adopted from the cultural story.  p54

-I think of all the angst I have felt between choices. I’ve been paralyzed by options and the idea that there is a single right way.  Renias is more Zen; for him the only choice is the one he has made. He knows any choice will set something in motion. This is the magic of the bush and life.  p59

-Renias isn’t trying to do anything. By being himself, free from roles, rules, obligations, he is in a state of complete naturalness. Lao Tzu said in his ancient text the Tao Te Ching, “when nothing is done, nothing is left undone.”  The mastery is that there is no trying.  p61 (reminds me of Mo Norman – professional golfer)

-As paradoxical as it sounds, going down a path and not finding a track is part of finding the track…. the path of not here is part of the path of here.  p 68

-There is an intelligence that runs through things.  To be a tracker is to be aligned with that intelligence.  Carl Jung referred to “synchronicity” as a simultaneous co-arising of something in the outer world with something deeply meaningful to your inner life.  The place in space and time where your non-local spiritual self, vast and unhindered, meets your human self in a moment of meaning specific to you. p71

-If we are to become trackers, all of us need to ask ourselves: Trackers of what?  New ways of living?  A new set of metrics of what a successful life actually is?  Can we, with the eyes of a tracker, see deeply into life and our own being and recognize a trail of intricately connected happenstance on which we know to move forward toward a new, more connected experience of life?  p 72

-I think of all the people I have spoken to who have said, “When I know exactly what the next thing is, I will make a move.”  I think of all the people whom I have taught to track who froze when they lost the track, wanting to be certain of the right path forward before they could move.  Trackers try things.. The tracker on a lost track enters a process of rediscovery that is fluid.  p75

-We have become so unnatural and patterned and socialized that some of us don’t even know what feels good or bad. We operate on autopilot. We are in our lives, but we are not alive.  p 75

-I have come to learn that losing the track is not the end of the trail, but rather a space of preparation….Prepare yourself to hear the call, invite the unknown, look for the first track, tune in to the instrument of the body, and learn to see the track amidst many that brings you to life. p77

-There is a wilderness in each person waiting to be brought back to life.  p 84

-As a safari guide I had been taught not to anthropomorphize.  The clinical eye of the scientific observer should not project human charctereistics onto the animals   What isolation not see our trickery in the jackal of the courage of a mother in a lioness around her cubs. As a tracker I wanted to take off the eyes of the superior impartial observer so the animals could inhabit me. I wanted to step toward kinship, not science. p 89

-The deepest lessons must be lived.. The wild self, the part that is in touch with instinct and needs and purpose, the part that can feel shades of emotion  and is natural, is lie that. It must be awakened, followed, listened for – tracked.  Men and women search for intimacy, but what they really need is wildness.  p 89-90

-In our encounters with the edges, we come to know ourselves more deeply. Neurosis is a substitute for real suffering.   Fearfulness is the most common state in a life that asks for no real courage.  p 103

-In truth, while a trail can flow under the eye of a master, it is often a process of nonlinear problem solving. The story never goes like you want it to.  p105

-Deep inside, we want to belong.  This remains true today, but maybe for the first time in human history, modern society – the dominant culture -has become the thing that isolates us.  p108

-Joseph Campbell:  “People are not looking for the meaning of life, they are looking fore the feeling of being alive.” p113

-It is a kind of energy I have witnessed in people who have merged “work,” “mission,” and “meaning.”  These people don’t take holidays or need days off. They outwork everyone, not from some kind of gritty determination, but from a place of pure pleasure.  p115

-To live as a tracker is to know your track when it passes you.  p116

-Suddenly, I feel an old friend who has walked with me for years arise. Each one of us has these friends; mine is called self-doubt.  I have learned rather than to resist him, to invite him in, welcoming him as a t-eacher of humility. Together, we continue.  The first track, and then the next first track.  

-At high levels of any art form, the practical gives way to the mystical. p 122

-More and more, the message lands. We are a society that lives in denial of death and so we are a society that denies life. But out here, how flimsy we are, with no boundaries between us and nature. What a wonderful teacher of how to live. In the face of fear is also something like awe. Then after awe,  humility.   Humility is the liberation from illusions of dominance, control, and power. I give up the importance of my life to instead become a part of life.  p 128

Great little book.  A great book for a discussion group.  Highly recommended.