Reviews

How to Think by Alan Jacobs

Posted on by Kevin Holtsberry / 1 Comment

I know what you are thinking (pun intended): a 150 page book on “How to Think” ought to be pretty straightforward.  Do this, don’t do that, avoid this, do more of that, etc.  Just like a million other self-help books.  A few anecdotes, a nice dash of pop-science and evolutionary biology and Boom! best seller and TED talks galore.

Alas, How to Think by Alan Jacobs offers a different approach. First off, Jacobs starts with something of a buzz kill: most of us don’t really want to think and for good reasons. Thinking is hard, it can be stressful, uncomfortable and result in conflict with friends and relatives.

What our brains really crave is socially approved consensus.  We like to pick a group and stay comfortably within their perspective.  Every time we toe the line we get a jolt of pleasure. Every time we stray we get angry feedback.

Not sure about what to say or think?  Don’t know or don’t know enough? Stick with the group!

Ah, I can hear you saying.  The trick is to be independent.  “Think for yourself.” Have an open mind.

No so fast, again Jacobs punctures these cliches by outlining how thinking is inescapably social and that there is not a clear connection between ‘independence” and being correct.  Having an open mind only gets you so far if it doesn’t eventually close around something.

So this is all a set-up for a three step process to proper thinking, right?  This is where Jacobs reveals his heretofore undiscovered key (which happens to be available as an online course for a low, low price for readers).

Nope. In fact, Jacobs says that you can’t get to good thinking through a set of invariable rules.  Thinking is an art not a science.  Some self-help guru!

Instead, what Jacobs (who, to be fair, is a cultural critic and teacher) does is poke and prod and circle and ruminate on things like virtue, character, and prudence; and the experiences of thinkers and writers, and yes, sometimes even scholars.  People like C.S. Lewis, John Stuart Mill and Henry James (plus, a contrarian discussion of Wilt Chamberlain).

But here’s the thing.  If you are a literate and humane person, you soon begin to enjoy Jacobs’ admittedly oblique, discursive and conversational approach.  You give up the need for a overly simplified 12-step program with handy lists and catchy acronyms. You appreciate the style of an engaging conversation with a smart friend at a comfortable coffee shop instead of the lecture slash informercial.

And what Jacobs tells you is that there are traps and hurdles in the way to better thinking.  Group thinking is a real temptation.  It is easy to act as if everyone not comfortably in your group is the Repugnant Cultural Other (RCO).  On the flip side, it is easy to pretend that science is the solution (or that better thinking is nearly impossible) and that getting rid of your emotion, your bias and your stereotypes will set you free.

But, contra some, Jacobs thinks real progress is possible.  To do so, one must first seek to develop a certain kind of character; to be a certain kind of person.  Logic and analysis, yes, but also emotion and social commitments.  A whole, healthy person thinks best.

Self-awareness plays a role as well.  Recognize when you are placing someone in the role of an RCO. Recognize when you are in a group that brooks no dissent, that punishes free debate and opinion from people of goodwill.  Seek membership in a community  of like-hearted people not necessarily those that think alike.

And there are tactics and processes that can help.  Look for the best of those you disagree with; the best arguments, the most attractive messengers, the most sensible perspectives, etc.  Look to accurately and fairly describe their arguments before offering your own.  Try out their language and perspective as a way to get inside their skin and see the world through their eyes. Like a method actor, understand how if you were in their shoes you might see the world the same way.  Plus, if you get rilled up and want to launch into refutation mode before the person has even finished speaking, wait five minutes. Don’t comment angry.

Recognize that the world we build out of keywords, metaphors and myths are necessary in many ways.  A world without these building blocks, shortcuts or mental furniture is a exhausting and maddening one.

But they can be dangerous, so develop a healthy skepticism and sense of humility about your worldview and opinions.  Don’t allow the narratives and mythology of your community to so fade into the background as to be invisible and never questioned.  Think about the blindspots of your patterns and habits.

And this brings us full circle. Thinking is hard.  Finding the balance between “intractably stubborn” and “pusillanimous and vacillating” takes time and effort.  You can’t be paralyzed by indecision or constantly be reinventing your mindset, but you also don’t wan’t to be so rigid that you can’t learn, change or adapt.  It is again, more art than science.

What in many ways lies at the bottom of How to Think is risk.  Are you willing to risk being wrong?  Are you willing to risk the ostracization of your group?  Are you willing to risk learning that the heretofore labeled RCO is closer to you than you would like to admit?

The penultimate chapter ends with what strikes me as a fundamental step in this journey/process: cultivating a healthy skepticism about our own motives and generosity towards the motives of others.

Oh, and for those of you that just have to have one. In the Afterword, Jacobs offers The Thinking Person’s Checklist with … yep, 12 steps.

But he didn’t say they were easy.

 

Site News

To blog or not to blog?

Posted on by Kevin Holtsberry / 3 Comments

For those of you scoring at home, my last blog post was roughly two and a half months ago. I think I have posted something like 16 times this year (a higher number thanks to a flood of posts in June). Clearly, this blog is a hit or miss type of thing (mostly miss without Jeff). To be fair, it does say “Occasional Bloggers” in the tag line …

So the question I have been mulling for the last couple of months (but not for the first time) is whether to keep blogging or call it quits after 14 years.

I think I want to give at least one more try at making it work. Let me give you some insight into why.

The basic reason I want to give it another try at making it work is that I still love to read and find books and authors fascinating.  I have read 75 books this year so that part hasn’t dropped off.  What I want to see if I can do is combine this love of books and ideas with the discipline and commitment to good writing and regular posting.  This is what I have failed to do for some time.  But I think it remains a skill and habit I can and should redevelop.

So what happened anyways? Why the steep drop off in blogging?  Obviously, a lack of time plays a big part.  My kids are older now and have activities that suck up lots of time and energy.  My wife is working full-time and that means a more complex schedule as well.  Throw in the distractions of social media (more about that in another post) and my interest in sports and it is hard to find time to sit down and write.

The other part is the combination of focus and motivation.  In addition to finding time to write, you need to have the focus to sit down and actually post something (particular if you want quality as opposed to just quantity) but you also need motivation to overcome the inertia of not posting.

And this is where I have been lacking.  I just haven’t felt like posting or that posting was worth the hassle.  To unpack this, allow me to offer Holtsberry’s key to communication: insight, clarity and persuasion.

Insight: you need to have something to say.  Why communicate if you don’t have something interesting, insightful or useful, right?  Insight means you have something worth communicating.

Clarity: you need to be able to clearly and effectively capture the insight.  Having something to say isn’t all that useful if you can’t explain what it is and why it is worthwhile. You may thinks your thoughts are brilliant.  Clarity means you can share your insight with others.

Persuasion: you need to be able to change someone’s mind.  This is the pinnacle of communication to my mind.  If you can share your insight clearly but also in such a way as to actually change the way someone thinks.  This might be through information or it might be through storytelling but changing someone’s mind or getting them to think differently is the ultimate in successful communication.

I had a real hard time getting motivated to blog because I didn’t think I could accomplish any of these three.  I wasn’t sure I had any insight, if I did wasn’t sure I could say it with clarity, and if I posted it I wasn’t sure it would reach anyone let alone change their thinking. Whenever I thought about posting a review, I had this nagging feeling that it wasn’t really worth the effort.

And like so many things, once you get out of the habit of doing it the easier it is to just keep not doing it.  Next thing you know months have gone by and you wonder whether you should hang it up.

So why not just give it up?  Been a good run, but lots of blogs close. Move on, as the saying goes.

I guess I don’t want to go out like this.  One of the reasons I started blogging was to improve my writing skills and engage with people and ideas.  I still want to do those things and I feel like I owe it to myself to do the hard work necessary to do them well. Basically, I want to use blogging as a tool to build focus and discipline and to prove to myself that I can write with insight, clarity and persuasion. [Plus, the free books and access to authors, etc.]

Time will tell if I have what it takes. So stay tuned …

Reviews

A Fragile Thing by Kevin Wignall

Posted on by Kevin Holtsberry / 1 Comment

Note: this has been edited. I hit publish a little too quickly and wanted to add a little more background and context.

I have been a fan of Kevin Wignall for some time (I think my first review was over 13 years ago).  And you would think I would not be disturbed by his approach at this point (I mention it in every review).  But I seem to have been tripped up once more by his latest work, A Fragile Thing.

It is basically the story of Max Emerson, the son of a wealthy expat family living in Europe parents in Switzerland, sister in Lyon, etc.).  But Max’s growing fortune comes from investing, and laundering, the money of international criminals and oligarchs.  Despite his wealth, there are clouds on the horizon.  His family has ostracized him, the FBI is looking into his past, and hackers are poking around his business.  Soon it seems like the secrets of his past, and as his parents secrets are revealed, are going to upend and unravel his life.

I finished reading it in June and posted this at Goodreads at the time as an initial response/reaction:

Hmm, not sure how I feel about this one. Some interesting elements and characters but left me kind of confused at the end. Almost felt like book one in a series where the characters are introduced but there is a lot left to flush out. Ending felt abrupt. Still mulling it.

When I realized it was released today and I needed to post my thoughts, I went back to the book and tried to wrestle with my ambiguity.  I enjoyed reading it but something just didn’t settle right; I was unsatisfied in some way.  After thinking about it, I think I didn’t like the book as much as I normally do Wignall’s writing for two reasons:

  1. It bugged me that the main character was a man comfortable using mobsters and other unsavory characters (something of an understatement) to gain fabulous wealth.  And was comfortable having people killed and killing people himself.  He seems cold, cut off and rather arrogant.  I just really didn’t like him.
  2. The book read almost as a series of vignettes that ended somewhat abruptly with a number of loose ends tied up. My first reaction to the book being finished was huh? It left me unsatisfied.

The second point could be more related to my reading it in fits and starts on my Kindle before bed. I might have struggled to get into it because I was reading for only a few minutes at a time but then it seemed like just when I got into it and the action picked up it was over.

The first issue, however, is just something you have to deal with when you read Wignall.  As I noted in my review of Who is Conrad Hirst?:

If there is something that makes me uncomfortable about Wignall’s work it has always been what I take to be his moral ambiguity.  Wignall doesn’t reflect a moral equivalence like some Cold War spy novelists – the idea that America and the Soviets were equally power hunger and willing to kill for their cause – so much as an absence of clear right or wrong.  Each individual has to define what is right and wrong for themselves.  The individualism/relativism is strong but it sometimes feels darker; there is almost a touch of nihilism involved.

Does moving that approach from hit men to wealthy investor/businessman make it worse somehow? I don’t know, but I think that underlying perspective still rubs me the wrong way.

All that said, I did enjoy reading A Fragile Thing.  I thought the plot hook was interesting and kicked the book off with a sense of tension and mystery.  And  there is some deft character building and plotting throughout. Max and his employees and contacts; his relationship with his family and the backstory of his parents; and his self-exploration about his lack of relationships and friends outside his business are well done and interesting in many ways.

There is a building suspense as the pressure mounts and the secrets are revealed. The reader is thinking: “How is Max going to deal with the multiple thread in his life that seem to be coming undone?”  And Wignall answers this question with some twists and turns.

But I have to say, I just didn’t like Max Emerson and in some way probably wanted him to fail.  But as I like to say, your mileage may vary … ;-)

 

Reviews

The Child by Fiona Barton

Posted on by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

I didn’t read The Widow by Fiona Barton, which was apparently an international best seller, but the teaser for her second book, The Child, intrigued me:

While razing an old neighborhood, construction workers make a grisly discovery at the building site: the remains of a baby buried years earlier. Thrown by the ongoing changes at her newspaper—where hastily written online content is increasingly valued over long-format investigative journalism, and layoffs loom—reporter Kate thinks finding the truth behind the baby’s story will put her byline back on the front page. Digging into the history of the working class neighborhood where the baby was found, Kate soon finds herself entangled in the lives of two women, Emma and Angela, whose lives and long-kept secrets are upended the discovery of the child. The story is told through the alternating perspectives of each woman, as their search for answers sets them on a shocking collision course.

So I agreed to participate in the blog tour and offer my thoughts. I grabbed the book on NetGalley and dove in.

I found it to be a mostly well done psychological thriller/mystery with a clever hook.  But I am wondering if it was just not my style.  A little too much drama and perhaps the dark subject matter made it slow going at times.

Plus, I found a lot of the characters unlikable and the early setup of the story a little slow. To be fair, as the mystery unraveled it picked up speed and there was definitely tension and excitement as it drove to its conclusion.  It was interesting enough to keep me reading but it just never switched gears and sucked me in.

At the risk of being accused of sexism or gender stereotypes (or whatever term is used for this particular sin these days), let me also note that there is likely a bit of an extra appeal to women due to the themes of motherhood, mother-daughter relationships, and the role of women in relationships and family, etc. If those themes and roles interest you, there is likely a great deal more emotional punch to the story.

I do think the character of Kate Waters gets stronger as the book develops.  I enjoyed her sense of humor and her often emotional reactions combined with, or perhaps driven by, her dedication to her career and desire to again break a big story.

Publishers Weekly notes the slow start but likes the finish:

Readers patient with the relatively slow initial pace until the intertwining stories gain momentum will be rewarded with startling twists—and a stunning, emotionally satisfying conclusion. Author tour.

Kirkus notes the melodrama:

Barton flirts with melodrama at times but pulls back and allows her characters to develop into fully realized, deeply scarred women whose wounds aren’t always visible.  This is as much a why-dunit as a whodunit, with the real question being whether it’s possible to heal and live with the truth after hiding behind a lie for so long.

Marry Cadden at USA Today was a big fan:

In addition to being a page-turning whodunit, The Child is also a subtle exploration of the relationships between mothers and their children, their bonds and battles. What makes a good mother? When it comes to maternal love, is there a fine line between helping and hindering?

Barton again weaves a tale that keeps us on our toes. A novel that is both fast-paced and thought-provoking, it keeps the reader guessing right to the end. The Child truly is the best of both worlds.

Maureen Corrigan at the Washington Post was a bit more harsh that I was:

“The Child” is a middling and much-too-long suspense story that would have benefited from a ruthless red-pencil. As she did in “The Widow,” Barton relies on multiple points of view to tell (and retell) the larger story of the “Building Site Baby” as the unidentified infant comes to be known. Three other female characters get drawn into this story by learning about that same news item that piqued Kate’s curiosity.

[…]

Figuring out how all these women are connected — to each other and to the unidentified infant — is the hypothetical draw of this kind of fragmented, multi-perspective type of storytelling. I say “hypothetical draw,” because “The Child” is more tedious than tense. Characters chew over the same events from chapter to chapter until they’re as worn out as a stick of used Trident; even when the final revelation seems undeniably clear to readers, it takes Barton a good 80 pages or so to wrap things up. “The Child” isn’t a terrible novel; it’s simply much too much of a just okay one.

If you like the psychological drama of the women, the internal monologues if you will, I think you would enjoy The Child.  This seems like a great beach read for example. But if this style and the themes noted are not your preference than it might not live up to its hype.  Alas, I can’t tell you if reading The Widow makes the second book better or whether the expectations are lessened by not having read it.

 

 

Reviews

The Space Between the Stars by Anne Corlett

Posted on by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

I was intrigued by The Space Between the Stars mostly because of the interesting concept/hook: virus threatens human existence so how do the few survivors react, order and civilization versus utopia and anarchy, etc. After reading it, I felt it had some promise but plenty of weaknesses.  For example, I felt like the lead character was prickly and angst ridden to the point of annoyance. On the other hand, give Corlett credit for creating a character whose personality and backstory are consistent and likely realistic. I also felt like the faith/religious element was odd, nebulous and hard to follow.

It was interesting enough that I kept reading but just didn’t quite grab me. Perhaps it is not quite my genre; a little too much romance and family drama for my tastes. Plus. lots of interesting philosophical questions bouncing around but not a lot of answers and at the expense of the plot and character development.

A few critics had very different reactions as well.

Marilyn Dahl at Shelf Awareness was full of praise:

Anne Corlett has taken the themes of apocalypse, people attempting to create Utopia but unleashing Armageddon, population engineering and breeding programs, and put her particular stamp on the familiar. The Space Between the Stars is a sci-fi story laced with homey details like e-readers and jigsaw puzzles–there are no esoteric descriptions of warp drives or biodomes or aliens. But there is adventure, there is romance, there is self-discovery. Jamie looks at a blue sky, which “felt like a lie, after so much time spent up above it, in the black of space. It was just something to hide beneath, to avoid seeing how wrenched and scattered among the stars they all really were.” But she finds, in this intriguing and wise story, what can fill the space between the stars.

Kirkus? Uh, not so much:

In the hands of someone with more literary skill, this story could have been something akin to Station Eleven in space, but it isn’t even close. The prose is insipid, with some eye-rollingly trite sentences, such as, “Home’s what’s left over when you’ve figured out all the places you don’t want to be.” Protagonist Jamie is staggeringly unlikable. For instance, she bemoans a past miscarriage, then reveals she abhorred her unborn child. Further flashbacks reveal that she’d only gotten pregnant because Daniel—the same man she’s desperately seeking—wanted a child. Worse, there’s virtually no science in this science fiction. The aforementioned virus, which inexplicably turns human bodies into dust, laughably calls to mind Daffy Duck being disintegrated by Marvin the Martian—although the science fiction of Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century is arguably better than anything here. The worldbuilding is dropped into the story in steaming piles of infodump that raise more questions than they answer. And after Jamie uncovers the absurdly obvious origins of the deadly virus (which had been telegraphed from the very beginning), the entire story is tied up in a big, banal bow.

Terrible science and even worse fiction.

I didn’t love it like Shelf Awareness but I didn’t hate it quite like Kirkus.  To me it didn’t live up to its promise but get some credit for the concept.

Reviews

Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America by Michael C. Harris

Posted on by Jeff Grim / 0 Comment

Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America, September 11, 1777 by Michael C. Harris is the 2015 winner of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond Book Award. It is a winner for good reason. It is an excellent analysis of the battle.

Here is a summary of the book from the publisher:

General Sir William Howe launched his campaign in late July 1777, when he loaded his army of 16,500 British and Hessian soldiers aboard a 265-ship armada in New York and set sail. Six difficult weeks later Howe’s expedition landed near Elkton, Maryland, and moved north into Pennsylvania. Washington’s rebel army harassed Howe’s men at several locations including a minor but violent skirmish at Cooch’s Bridge in Delaware on September 3. Another week of hit-and-run tactics followed until Howe was within three miles of Chads’s Ford on Brandywine Creek, behind which Washington had posted his army in strategic blocking positions along a six-mile front. The young colonial capital of Philadelphia was just 25 miles farther east.

Obscured by darkness and a heavy morning fog, General Howe initiated his plan of attack at 5:00 a.m. on September 11, pushing against the American center at Chads’s Ford with part of his army while the bulk of his command swung around Washington’s exposed right flank to deliver his coup de main, destroy the colonials, and march on Philadelphia. Warned of Howe’s flanking attack just in time, American generals turned their divisions to face the threat. The bitter fighting on Birmingham Hill drove the Americans from the field, but their heroic defensive stand saved Washington’s army from destruction and proved that the nascent Continental foot soldiers could stand toe-to-toe with their foe. Although fighting would follow, Philadelphia fell to Howe’s legions on September 26.

Although the writing is a bit dry at times, the scholarship is excellent. Harris uses many different original and secondary sources.

One of the many items that stuck out to me is Harris’ debunking of several myths surrounding the battle. For example, he exposes the myth of Thomas Cheyney, a local citizen, who in previous has been credited with “saving” the American army. Based on Harris’ research and strong conclusions, there is no evidence that Cheyney warned Washington of the flank attack.

The book also thrives in the details. Harris in many instances lists the names of those who are killed or wounded in a particular part of the battle. That example and his efforts to pin down the timing of each movement give the reader an intimate understanding of the figures and events surrounding this important battle in the American Revolution.

Harris also equally criticizes Washington and Howe. He blames the failure of the campaign (Howe succeeded in capturing Philadelphia, but he failed to join with General Burgoyne in New York) on Howe’s indecisiveness and slow travel from New York City to Maryland.  Harris also points out that the slow travel cost the lives of horses needed for the campaign – as a result, he had few cavalry to call on for scouting and chasing Washington’s defeated army.

Harris also rightfully puts some of the American loss on Washington. He did not properly reconnoiter the battlefield.  Thus, Howe knew more about the layout of the land than Washington and was able to flank the American army. In addition, Harris highlights that even though Howe was known for his flanking movements, Washington was still surprised by Howe’s flanking at Brandywine.

Here is an interview with the author from the publisher.