Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark

Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark
by Ceclia Watson, Pam Ward (narrator)
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780062917935
Publication Date: July 30, 2019
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins

The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?

In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark, which for years was the trendiest one in the world of letters. But in the nineteenth century, as grammar books became all the rage, the rules of how we use language became both stricter and more confusing, with the semicolon a prime victim. Taking us on a breezy journey through a range of examples—from Milton’s manuscripts to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letters from Birmingham Jail” to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep—Watson reveals how traditional grammar rules make us less successful at communicating with each other than we’d think. Even the most die-hard grammar fanatics would be better served by tossing the rule books and learning a better way to engage with language.

Through her rollicking biography of the semicolon, Watson writes a guide to grammar that explains why we don’t need guides at all, and refocuses our attention on the deepest, most primary value of language: true communication.

Another great recommendation from the Irresponsible Reader. I’m an unapologetic user of the semicolon and really have never understood why it was such a divisive mark. This short-ish (about 4 hours on audio) history / essay on the mark cleared up some of that for me. People really do get weird about trying to codify every last possible detail.

Watson balances on a fine line between ‘yes! rules are necessary for clear communication’ and ‘no! throw out the rules and let your flag fly your own way!’ concerning punctuation in general. She includes convincing arguments for both sides – but I’m still falling on the prescriptivist side of things. I’m not fussed how someone uses punctuation, as long as they DO use punctuation, and in such a way as to clearly communicate their message. My resentment stems from writers (and I’m using that term to loosely encompass anyone trying to communicate in a written form, whether it’s text messages or novels) who make me work overly hard to parse the meaning they’re trying to convey. I’d like to know if they’re inviting people to eat grandma, or inviting grandma to eat and I’d like to do so without breaking a sweat.

The narrator does a fantastic job with this book, and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys the occasional dip into linguistic nerdism.

Mind of the Raven

Mind of the Raven
by Bernd Heinrich
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781515978404
Publication Date: June 1, 2016
Genre: Natural Science, Non-fiction
Publisher: Tantor Media

Bernd Heinrich involves us in his quest to get inside the mind of the raven. But as animals can only be spied on by getting quite close, Heinrich adopts ravens, thereby becoming a 'raven father,' as well as observing them in their natural habitat. He studies their daily routines, and in the process, paints a vivid picture of the ravens' world. At the heart of this book are Heinrich's love and respect for these complex and engaging creatures, and through his keen observation and analysis, we become their intimates too.

Heinrich's passion for ravens has led him around the world in his research. Mind of the Raven follows an exotic journey-from New England to Germany, and from Montana to Baffin Island in the high Arctic-offering dazzling accounts of how science works in the field, filtered through the eyes of a passionate observer of nature. Each new discovery and insight into raven behavior is thrilling, at once lyrical and scientific.

I don’t know what to think about this book. Would I have liked it more if I’d read the print version instead of listening to the audio? I don’t know, but I suspect … maybe.

Heinrich is a published scientist who studied ravens, so the book is pure behavioural science, no deviations, no asides; all very on-point and full of pure observational research and field studies. I have no complaints about this in theory – it was all very interesting and I can’t remember ever thinking it was getting dull or monotonous. Except that the narrator came very close to making it sound very dull and monotonous. This is why I suspect I’d have liked it more if I’d read it, or if there had a been a different narrator. Norman Dietz was competent; maybe even more than competent, as his delivery tried to be lively and was never wooden. But it was also obvious that he’s an older man, whose voice was often gravely and always a bit breathy, and in spite of his obvious efforts to bring the text alive, his voice still gave the narration a slight monotone that was hard to get past.

If I have any complaint about the content itself, it’s only that as a scientist, Heinrich is a bit cold-blooded. While it’s obvious he thoroughly enjoys his ravens and has no problem admitting to often having favorites, his objectivity and efforts to not anthropomorphise means that the ravens’ personalities never really come through. He doesn’t treat them as pets and they are, for the most part, semi-wild, but still, as someone who anthropomorphises everything, I’d have liked to have a better sense of they were as individuals.

I also struggled quite a bit at times with what Heinrich was willing to do in the name of science. While he always fed the ravens using roadkills (apparently ‘fresh’ is as relative a term to a raven as it is to vultures), there were a few studies he did where he blithely sacrificed untold numbers of animals to the ravens – while still alive – just to see how the ravens would react, and in one study he introduced a wild female raven to a tightly knit group of 4 ravens who had grown up together to see how they’d react, which wasn’t a positive experience for the poor caught raven. After a couple of days of witnessing her ostracism, Heinrich went out of town for a day and came back to find her dead from being basically pecked to death. He seemed surprised, but not remorseful, and the whole thing left a sour taste, as I’d have no problem arguing that that little experiment was not only unethical, but valueless from a scientific viewpoint.

Mostly, however, the information was interesting, if a little dated (most of his studies were done in the 90’s).

How to Solve a Cold Case

How to Solve a Cold Case; And Everything Else You Wanted To Know About Catching Killers
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781443459372
Publication Date: April 19, 2022
Pages: 339
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins

Get inside the mind of an elite cold case investigator and learn how to solve a murder.

Despite advances in DNA evidence and forensic analysis, almost half of murder cases in Canada and the US remain unsolved. By 2016, the solved rate had dropped so significantly in the United States that it was the lowest in recorded history, with one in two killers never even identified, much less arrested and successfully prosecuted. And the statistics are just as bad in Canada.

As a sought-after global expert and former detective, Arntfield has devoted his career to helping solve cold cases and serial murders, including the creation of the Western University Cold Case Society, which pairs students with police detectives to help solve crimes.

In How to Solve a Cold Case, Arntfield outlines the history of cold case squads in Canada and the US, and lays out the steps to understanding and solving crime. Arntfield shows you what to look for, how to avoid common mistakes, recognize patterns and discover what others have missed. Weaving in case studies of cold crimes from across Canada and the US, as well as a chapter on how armchair detectives can get involved, How to Solve a Cold Case is a must-read for mystery fans and true crime buffs everywhere.

I’ve been in a slump recently and have been re-reading some of the long-timers on my shelves, hoping they will nudge me out of it. They haven’t. This book has been lingering on my library pile, quietly giving me the side-eye while silently reminding me that I’ve already renewed it 3 times and that’s my library’s limit. So I picked it up and gave it a go.

Now, it might be because I’m in a slump and I’m feeling a bit harsh as a result, but I didn’t like this book. It was only about 10% of what I’d hoped, which were case studies and discussion of little known cold cases and how they were solved. The remaining 90% was divided up between first year University level lecturing (60%) and self promotion (20%).

More than half of the lecturing portion of the book was about the sexually deviant nature of serial killers – and he makes it clear that anyone that murders more than once is a serial killer. I won’t dispute this, which isn’t for me to do anyway, but it feels a bit excessive to call 2 murders a serial. I bring it up because this definition might leave readers feeling even more despondent about humanity than they already do. A reader on the more sensitive, or impressionable, end of the spectrum might never want to leave their house again, or allow their children to ever see sunlight. Especially women, of course. Honestly, by the end of the book, a reader would give a lot to read about a good old fashioned murder for inheritance.

Mostly, I think, I just didn’t like his writing. I wanted to DNF it, but I kept hoping for more case studies, which the author included just enough of to keep me on the string, but by the 75% mark there was some heavy skimming because I just wanted it to be over.

A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers that Used Them

A Taste for Poison: Eleven deadly molecules and the killers who used them
by Neil Bradbury
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250270757
Publication Date: February 1, 2022
Pages: 291
Genre: History, Science
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

A brilliant blend of science and crime, A TASTE FOR POISON reveals how eleven notorious poisons affect the body--through the murders in which they were used.

As any reader of murder mysteries can tell you, poison is one of the most enduring—and popular—weapons of choice for a scheming murderer. It can be slipped into a drink, smeared onto the tip of an arrow or the handle of a door, even filtered through the air we breathe. But how exactly do these poisons work to break our bodies down, and what can we learn from the damage they inflict?

In a fascinating blend of popular science, medical history, and true crime, Dr. Neil Bradbury explores this most morbidly captivating method of murder from a cellular level. Alongside real-life accounts of murderers and their crimes—some notorious, some forgotten, some still unsolved—are the equally compelling stories of the poisons involved: eleven molecules of death that work their way through the human body and, paradoxically, illuminate the way in which our bodies function.

Drawn from historical records and current news headlines, A Taste for Poison weaves together the tales of spurned lovers, shady scientists, medical professionals and political assassins to show how the precise systems of the body can be impaired to lethal effect through the use of poison. From the deadly origins of the gin & tonic cocktail to the arsenic-laced wallpaper in Napoleon’s bedroom, A Taste for Poison leads readers on a riveting tour of the intricate, complex systems that keep us alive—or don’t.

Previous readers (who listened to audio versions, if that makes any difference) warned me that the format was a bit monotonous, so I went in with expectations firmly in place. Perhaps because I was reading a hard copy, I didn’t find the format to be too same/same. I whizzed through the book though, in a way I seldom do for non-fiction, so it’s a fast, easy read. While I liked the case studies he provided overall, I really appreciated the more contemporary accounts; I feared a bit that he’d recycle the same old case studies so often used in books of similar subjects. Plus, you don’t hear about people trying to poison people much anymore, unless they’re an enemy of a state that speaks … oh, say, Russian.

I did find the writing to be a little bit unsophisticated – not so much that it hindered the reading experience, but it’s probably why it was a fast read. I heavily skimmed the epilogue, for example, because it read entirely too much like the summaries we used to have to write in high school as part of our 500 word essays. What I did take away from the epilogue though, was that I missed more than just the ‘castle where Hogwart’s was filmed’ when I ran out of time for Alnwick that day many years ago – I missed the poison garden! Damn!

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022, for the Arsenic and Old Lace square. This completes my squares and I have now reached a Bingo Card Blackout. No Bingos, yet, but they’re all there, just waiting for the calls.

DNF @ 168 pages: Invisible Women

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
by Caroline Criado Perez
isbn: 9781784706289
Publication Date: March 17, 2020
Pages: 410
Genre: Science
Publisher: Vintage Books

Imagine a world where...

· Your phone is too big for your hand
· Your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body
· In a car accident you are 47% more likely to be injured.

If any of that sounds familiar, chances are you're a woman.

From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, and the media. Invisible Women reveals how in a world built for and by men we are systematically ignoring half of the population, often with disastrous consequences. Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the profound impact this has on us all.

Discover the shocking gender bias that affects our everyday lives.

Here’s me, being all contrarian and swimming against the tide, but I could not finish this book. It engendered a level of page rage in me that I haven’t experienced since being forced to read Orwell, although, not so much that I’d like to flick a bic at it, so Orwell’s title remains safe.

Why the page rage? Because this book was sold to me as an academic look at the bias towards men in everyday living; if that’s what it was meant to be, it’s poorly written, with very little context, and next to no data to inform the author’s assertions. As a diatribe or manifesto, however, it’s an excellent piece of writing, full of snark and sarcasm and barely repressed vitriol, in spite of the forward where she claims to take an agnostic view, because so much of the bias is unintentional. Understand that I don’t make any claim that these bias don’t exist – I don’t disagree with her premise in the slightest. But I don’t like anyone of any gender that rages against the machine and does little else.

But the biggest reason for my page rage and my DNF is that I couldn’t help thinking as I read it that I’m not a female in Perez’s world. I’m too tall, my hands are too big, my seatbelt sits where it’s supposed to, but most damningly of all: I don’t have children. I’m not a care-taker or giver, and therefore I am irrelevant.

I have never encountered this attitude in my books before, and the irony is not lost on me that my first experience with it is in a feminist title.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat
by Oliver Sacks
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781447203834
Publication Date: January 1, 2007
Pages: 256
Genre: Non-fiction, Science
Publisher: Picador

In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities, and yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales illuminate what it means to be human.

This has been on my shelf for at least 10 years, and I don’t know why it took me so long to pick it up; I’m a sucker for case studies, and Sacks doesn’t disappoint in that regard.

This is a collection of previously published case studies of various neurological disorders, and reading it reinforces my sense that truly, every day is a miracle when your brain isn’t forsaking you. I alternated between awe, horror, indignation, anger, sadness and, throughout a growing, overwhelming amount of respect for those that dedicate their lives to their patients. Sacks impressed me as both a doctor and a human.

The book wasn’t perfect – Sacks had a tendency to meander through citations of similar cases, or other doctors’ hypothesis, and when that happened, my eyes got a bit glassy, and I skimmed, but overall it’s an incredibly readable collection. I wish there was more follow up for so many of these people – I’m left curious and hopeful that they all found some space in the world for themselves.

DNF: Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond

Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond
by John Lewis-Stempel
Rating: ★★
isbn: 9780857524577
Publication Date: March 14, 2019
Pages: 289
Genre: Natural Science, Non-fiction, Science
Publisher: Doubleday

The Pond. Nothing in the countryside is more humble or more valuable. It's the moorhen's reedy home, the frog's ancient breeding place, the kill zone of the beautiful dragonfly. More than a hundred rare and threatened fauna and flora depend on it.

Written in gorgeous prose, Still Water tells the seasonal story of the wild animals and plants that live in and around the pond, from the mayfly larvae in the mud to the patrolling bats in the night sky above. It reflects an era before the water was polluted with chemicals and the land built on for housing, a time when ponds shone everywhere like eyes in the land, sustaining life for all, from fish to carthorse.

Still Water is a loving biography of the pond, and an alarm call on behalf of this precious but overlooked habitat. Above all, John Lewis-Stempel takes us on a remarkable journey - deep, deep down into the nature of still water.

Straight up this book was not at all what I was expecting. The title implies a close analysis of pond life; the pull quote at the bottom reinforces this expectation.

Instead, this is a philosophical naval-gaze / memoir / diary. Disappointing, given that I was in the mood for a discussion of bugs, amphibians, fish … maybe some algae for color. But I’ve also enjoyed other books similar to this (A Farmer’s Diary comes immediately to mind) so I shifted my expectations and persevered. Unfortunately, even with shifted expectations I could not get past “Winter”; the writing was just a bit too meta and the prose was trying too hard to be poetic. One season in – about 25% of the book – and I still really wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish.

I gave it two stars because it was technically well written, the cover is gorgeous, and it might just be me.

The Library Book

The Library Book
by Susan Orlean
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781782392262
Publication Date: November 1, 2018
Pages: 319
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Atlantic Books

After moving to Los Angeles, Susan Orlean became fascinated by a mysterious local crime that has gone unsolved since it was carried out on the morning of 29 April 1986: who set fire to the Los Angeles Public Library, ultimately destroying more than 400,000 books, and perhaps even more perplexing, why?

With her characteristic humour, insight and compassion, Orlean uses this terrible event as a lens through which to tell the story of all libraries - their history, their meaning and their uncertain future as they adapt and redefine themselves in a digital world.

Filled with heart, passion and extraordinary characters, The Library Book discusses the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives.

When I reviewed The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, I said I dislike true crime, yet here I am again, talking about a true crime book. Sort of.

The publisher’s classification for this book is ‘true crime’ – and it does cover in detail the devastating fire at Central Library in Los Angeles in 1986, but the case remains unsolved, the suspect deceased, and some questions remain about whether or not it was actually arson – so was a crime even committed?

In the same way The Orchid Thief by the same author was nominally about the theft of protected orchid species from parkland, but was really more about the obsessive allure of orchids that drives some people to extremes, so The Library Book is nominally about the Central Library fire, but really a history of the LA Library system and an ode to the importance and joy of libraries in general.

For those that enjoy True Crime, this book is going to be frustrating; for those of us that aren’t fans of true crime, this book will fall somewhere in the range of ‘more palatable’ and ‘perfect’. For me, it was close to perfect. I was fascinated by the narrative of the fire itself, how bad it was, how challenging it was to put out, the whole walk-through of the day itself. The logistics of the aftermath and conserving as many of the books as they could. I was interested in the investigation; the manpower, the few slim leads, interviews with those involved. Mystery catnip! The few chapters devoted to the suspect, Harry Peak, were good, if disturbing. LA really has more than its share of people who live in their own reality.

Orlean interspersed all of this with a history of the Library system, from its modest start as a fee-based lending library at the edge of the wild west, to the massive city-wide system it is today, including concise bios of the many men and women who headed up, ran, and directed the library. A few of these chapters crawled a bit, but there were enough characters involved to keep things mostly lively.

I genuinely enjoy Orlean’s writing; she’s a journalist who knows how to do her research and engage the reader without trying to solicit a reaction in one direction or another. A most excellent read.

The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World

The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World
by Abigail Tucker
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781476738239
Publication Date: December 1, 2016
Pages: 241
Genre: Non-fiction, Science
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

House cats rule back alleys, deserted Antarctic islands, and our bedrooms. Clearly, they own the Internet, where a viral cat video can easily be viewed upwards of ten million times. But how did cats accomplish global domination? Unlike dogs, they offer humans no practical benefit. The truth is they are sadly incompetent rat-catchers and pose a threat to many ecosystems. Yet, we love them still.

To better understand these furry strangers in our midst, Abby Tucker travels to meet the breeders, activists, and scientists who’ve dedicated their lives to cats. She visits the labs where people sort through feline bones unearthed from the first human settlements, treks through the Floridian wilderness in search of house cats on the loose, and hangs out with Lil Bub, one of the world’s biggest feline celebrities.

Witty, intelligent, and always curious, Tucker shows how these tiny creatures have used their relationship with humans to become one of the most powerful animals on the planet. The appropriate reaction to a cuddly kitten, it seems, might not be aww but awe.

This should have been a better book; Tucker is a self professed, life long lover of cats, and I understand her need to be objective about the subject matter – I applaud it, even. But just about all of this book felt like an apology, or an over-correction of bias. Or both.

The Introduction professes the text to be an overview of the history of cats as domesticated animals and their intersection with culture and pop culture. It mostly succeeds, but really, just barely. I think her motivation underneath it all is to point out that cats are cats and cats do what cats do, but humans are, at the end of the day, at the heart of the destruction that cats get blamed for. After all, without human interference and transportation, house cats would still be a wild animal confined to the region around Turkey. Unfortunately, if that’s the message she intended, she was a little too subtle about it.

There were highlights; I loved that she pointed out that cats are the only domesticated animal that chooses to be domesticated and the only domesticated animal that can successfully return to the wild. When people say cats are independent, I don’t perhaps think they realise just how independent they truly are. I admire them for that.

Otherwise, I mostly just argued with the text as I read it, and all in all I found The Inner Life of Cats: The Science and Secrets of Our Mysterious Feline Companions by Thomas McNamee to be a superior text all the way around. I learned a lot from that book, and it left me with a lot to think about. This one, I was just mostly happy to have finished.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
by Allison Hoover Bartlett
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781594488917
Publication Date: January 1, 2009
Pages: 274
Genre: Books and Reading, Non-fiction
Publisher: Riverhead Books

Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be.

Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Bartlett befriended both outlandish characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure.

With a mixture of suspense, insight, and humor, she has woven this entertaining cat-and-mouse chase into a narrative that not only reveals exactly how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes, where he stashed the loot, and how Sanders ultimately caught him but also explores the romance of books, the lure to collect them, and the temptation to steal them. Immersing the reader in a rich, wide world of literary obsession, Bartlett looks at the history of book passion, collection, and theft through the ages, to examine the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.

I’m not a fan of true crime books; I find any public attempt to ‘get into the mind’ of a criminal a distasteful glorification of abhorrent behaviour and I think criminals should rot in obscurity.

All of which makes my enjoyment of this book just prove what a hypocrite I am, although in my defence I didn’t realise when I bought it that it would be delving into the sociopath’s head – I thought it was more a documentation of the chase itself; how a ‘bibliodick’ investigated the stolen books and how the thief was apprehended. You know, like a mystery!

It was very little of any of those things, since the thief in question was apprehended before Hoover Bartlett started researching the book and agreed to participate (the book started as an article for a San Francisco magazine).

The first half of the book was everything I hoped it would be, as Hoover Bartlett met with rare book dealers, went to book fairs, talked about book collecting and some of the lottery-like finds that have happened over the years. She talked with the ‘bibliodick’, Ken Sanders, who talked about how he got sucked into chasing down the elusive man who’d stolen over 100k worth of books over three years and was getting away with it. The first half of this book was purely fascinating.

The second half of the book was fascinating too – in a train wreck sort of way. The second half of the book focuses on Hoover Bartlett’s attempt to figure out why the thief does what he does, and continues to do even after he’s been caught. I loathe using a serial killer as a comparison – for obvious reasons – but this guy was, in every way except the crimes he committed, Ted Bundy: clean cut, well spoken, charming, respectful, intelligent, with absolutely no conscience whatsoever. He knew what he was doing was illegal, but didn’t think it was wrong – and he didn’t care either way. His delusions were mind-boggling, and just when I thought he couldn’t possibly go there in the land of rationalisations, he’d go there.

I originally bought this book years ago in some half-hearted cautionary tale sort of way, when I was battling the stacks of books threatening to take over my house. It wasn’t that kind of book, but still, it was one I couldn’t put down. It was well written, Hoover Bartlett seemed she was being pretty transparent with the reader, and I genuinely enjoyed the parts about what it means to be a book collector.

But I still don’t like true crime books.