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It gets very good. I am a bit astonished - if she can have this gravity & insight - why the horrible writing at the start? Perhaps at this part of a chronological account of her illness when she cannot help being serious, whereas at the start of her narrative she is still close enough to health to be frivolous & melodramatic - or, she wrote the start at the end, when her mind was at its worst after the chemo...

I read a lot of nonfiction about the human body. After a while you notice some repetition in "wow-inspiring" anecdotes (eg. Phineas Gage). This book probably stands out in providing new factoids, relevant to how we see our body, & utterly engaging. I am impressed.

In the middle, as his health worsens, Ames becomes rather more maudlin & goes into theosophical soliloquys which he had said at the start he didn't want to do. It seems in character, however... thankfully it picked up again a bit later.

Depicts a pretty smart child - he notices & remember: he can make use of mundane experiences (cleaning gum off desks) by noticing patterns, he can plan when would be the best time to hand in a note so he doesn't have to confront the school principle based on his past observations the principle is usually greeting kids at the door in the morning. He remembers the number of a key so he knows which lock it belongs to.

It opened with Cromwell's head. An odd barbaric piece of recent British history that has the Brits not decapitating any more monarchs centuries. I recognized it immediately due to having read Tomalin's unequaled bio on Pepy's where Cromwell's prominence & desecration featured conspicuously. So it was not as shocking as it might have been come new... How interesting one's first approach with an info colors...

Since my last complaint the book started getting good. The part about: planning movements that are difficult (pg 43); pulling out hair (pg 47); the often unpaid, lowly paid, less acknowledged & only noticed in absence work of personal care (a kind word, joke, touch) alongside the procedural elements of the chemotherapy ward (pg. 54), or domestic (pg. 55).

An insightful yet jarring sentence "Enchantment exists when things are themselves & not their uses.", I had to read it twice to understand it. An interesting notion yet so lazily composed... I cannot help thinking of Katherine Rundell's The Golden Mole, where normally staccatoed factoids are enraptured in erudite vocabulary soothingly written into almost prose.

A few illuminating thoughts that helped me relax into thinking it is a worthwhile read, & then... a snarky comment about how her & her friends named her oncologist "Dr. Baby" due to his appearance (this careless remark gives off mean girl vibes).

but I can read it - when she is not making inappropriately inaccurate metaphors of quakery & fantasy to medical science (for modern medicine is neither a god nor performative arts, for chrissake), she shares interesting historical tidbits & at moments writes sincerely of vulnerability, instead of hiding behind & indulging in romantic wordplay. Why this rushed job to print? Perhaps the medical bills were pressing.

an unpromising start: as the author makes a simile of her diagnosis with that of a fortune teller’s prognosis. A person in sickness should be given consideration & sympathy - yet I feel that her friends who proofread her work did her a ill service by letting such asinine similes go on.

I cannot help feeling conflicted: to criticise someone writing while ill, yet…a Pulitzer? Can I then write one too?

Unfortunately ref 19 R. Jimenez no longer leads to the article in question. Would it make sense in this ephemeral internet age to generally refer to a way back machine link instead?

Fortunately I persisted past his self-deprecating intro written in a modern tone, to the actually meaty, engagingly written history within.

How happy am I to come across such a book published so recently, yet so tightly composed of rhetoric and evidence that challenges notions I had so comfortably built up over the years - what I had taken as a consensus on human history has actually been nothing but relatively recent (invented circa 19th century) received knowledge (passed down from others).

so far it’s only confirmed my impression of Paris as a grimy city and put me off eating out anywhere in that city where you can’t see the kitchen.

I feel conflicted with Bolker as I am not sure whether her advice is entirely applicable to academic writing, as the title “dissertation” suggests. She recommends free writing & then shares that she write of all sorts of domestic concerns she has on her mind (instead of a specific research project), which nowadays is called a brain dump.

she strikes me as deeply unhappy & meaningless.

probably the pinnacle of Sapolsky’s input + creative synergy - he obviously read widely & could gather connections in an extremely engaging way. He is much more bogged down with details in his later work “Behave” - but that book is more akin to a textbook than these essays, the brevity which allows more diversity of topics and tidy finishings.

The factoids are nice bait for me to keep interested in the text - otherwise I would have difficulty continuing with the book (like the 7-minute productivity solution, which reads like an easy read but the author lacks any research discipline, & nuance, to create trust & interest).

I suspect this book is easier for me to connect with than I might have done from the start of my interest in productivity because I have tried multiple approaches with myself & have experienced enough states he referred to for the content to resonate with me. I do wonder if those who electrocuted themselves for stimulation would get scatterfocus as the benefit it is without prior valuation of introspection.

picture placement issues frequently occuring a picture may depict one fly while the text has moved on to the next fly, so I am continually having to remind myslef that fly is not the fly being spoken of now.

Too verbose at the start. He makes statements of things that are clear to people today (or maybe just those who have thought of design) which do not require all the elementary hashing out. Norman also tries too hard to ensure his legacy as someone involved in HCD is preserved and spends too much space giving credit to himself. Donella Meadow’s book ‘Thinking in Systems’ is way more succinct & readable.

Having a hard time at the start. Norman mentions that he updated the book but added necessary bulk. I think he has taught the material so much that he has lost sight of what would be news to people. The start is cluttered with patient generalizations that are common sense to many today. Norman is anxious to make sure that he gets credit for the concepts he has been involved in developing. It makes a hard to read book

Find the writing device of pitting the bonobo against the atheist, & speaking for the bonobo, rather artificial. Needless to say de Waals is speaking for himself.

He makes relatable, believable explications of neurosci & mental disorders into the spectrum of the common. I am pinching myself as I hear connected theories and studies being touted today at a workshop on social cognition I am attending, in 2023. Exhilirating!

I don’t get why Sapolsky is such an engaging writer when other science writers, be they scientist or journalist, fail to be so interesting. I’m guessing partially in writing general science Sapolsky allows himself the imagination and speculation that some researchers find difficult to overcome, whereas journalists may have too shallow an understanding to make viable (thus attractive) inferences.

similar style of small town concerns with glimmers of insight that characterize the work of L. M. Montgomery - without the swooning romantic resolves.

became a bit dry in the middle - but this is in keeping Austen’s Emma itself. I had held off reading this book before as I it’s my least favored Austen books. Am very impressed with the author still for his fidelity to the original characters & plot, but set in the current times. It also helps me realize how very modern Austens stories actually are - unlike other classics of her time.

it is but a retelling - so how could it be soooo good? I am very happy with him.

at this point I believe this books should replace Catcher in the Rye. Protagonist is also very whiney & trending to nihilism.

I hated Catcher in the Rye - I thought it was crap & drivel - & the folks who put it on a classics list were either 1. pretending to be cool & with the times; &/or 2 having a larf. What I am saying is that ABOK is an improvement over CITR. ABOK is somewhat diverting.

written in what I consider “the old style” rich on description & set-building, yet not succinct enough for an impatient generation. I had enjoyed the movie many years ago as a teenager. I do not know yet if I would like the book.