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The Cello Suites

Book Notes kitt decided around 21:45 on 20 November 2020 to publish this:

The Cello Suites is such a lovely book, a good, fun, wholesome read. The book tells three stories: Johann Sebastian Bach's biography, Pablo Casals' modern discovery of the previously unknown Cello Suites by said Bach, and the author's journey from meeting the Cello Suites for the first time, and learning about Casals's discovery and Bach's history, to researching and writing the book. The tale in three parts is woven together delightfully, given insights into all three main characters: Bach, Casals, and Siblin.

Gosh, this is such a lovely weaving of three lives bound together by the puzzle of the book-titled music, I strongly recommend it.

My discovery of this book was from an XOXO recommendation for the Song Exploder podcast, from which I found the Yo-Yo Ma episode and references to this book. I recommend that podcast, too (at least, that episode).

Beyond all these concerns was Bach’s restless nature, his tendency to become dissatisfied with a job after a spell, to feel constrained by limitations, musical and otherwise, and not to be content with the status quo, but to move forward once he’d mastered the musical possibilities offered by any given situation.
Page: 101

At the concert, which was broadcast on radio, Casals appealed to the democratic countries (which had just let Hitler walk all over them in Czechoslovakia) not to abandon Spain. “Do not commit the crime of letting the Spanish Republic be murdered,” he pleaded. “If you allow Hitler to win in Spain, you will be the next victims of his madness. The war will spread to all Europe, to the whole world. Come to the aid of our people.
Page: 111

The Space Between Worlds

Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 21:35 on 28 September 2020

I very much enjoyed this book. It was recommended on the XOXO slack, and worth the recommendation.

The premise is that the multidimensional universe exists, which means resources on one universe instance can be harvested for the prime planet, the first planet to develop the technology to traverse between worlds. The catch in this traversing is that only one instance of a person can exist in a universe. If a traverser, a walker between universes, arrives in a universe where their counterpart is still alive, then both die. Which is to say, the most valuable traversers are those who are alive on the prime Earth, and dead in all the other universes.

The story is told from the point of view of Cara, a traverser who doesn't quite belong on the Prime.

Yes, all sorts of spoilers:

The original Cara went to the narrator Cara's world and died, because duplicates can't exist (see above). Cara, being the survivor that she is, assumed Prime Cara's identity, and travelled back to Prime. So, now we have Cara figuring out what is going one, an uncomfortable longing, a world of comparable riches, new social dynamics to learn even as the universes are quite parallel, and a confrontation to power. The ending is not the typical happy ending, but isn't isn't an unhappy ending, more of a "yeah, that's the right ending."

The book, similar to Dread Nation in its character and voice, is engrossing the whole way through. Recommended. Good science fiction and worth the read.

Because no traverser has ever made a report to enforcement or asked questions, they think they’ve pulled this elaborate ruse on lower-level employees. But really, we just don’t care. A job’s a job, and people edging out other people to make money buying and selling something invisible just sounds like rich-people problems.
Location: 152

The Great Influenza

Book Notes kitt decided around 18:44 on 4 August 2020 to publish this:

Rob Whiteley recommended this book to me, Ryan Holiday recommended this book to his reading list, and I strongly recommend this book to pretty much anyone who will listen. The Great Influenza was written over ten years ago and tells us ALL ABOUT the (no longer) upcoming pandemic. The parallels between the 1918 Spanish Flu and the 2019 CoVid19 pandemic are disheartening, making this book both a history book and a playbook on how NOT to handle a pandemic.

The Great Influenza tells us the history of The Spanish flu, which probably should have been called the Kansas Flu, which went from February 1918 to around April 1920, infecting about 500 million people (or about a third of the world's population). Somewhere between 20 million and 50 million died during that pandemic, even as people said "it's just the flu." Up to 60000 people die in the US from the flu even today, but hey, "it's just the flu" seems to be the dismissive way we ignored the warnings 100 years ago, and today.

The book is also an exploration of science, broad strokes on how we discover new ideas, hypothesize and test those ideas, and form theories of phenomena and solutions to problems. Discovery is rarely a straight line, yet we see only the end result, often ignoring all the hard work that goes into that end. There are many, many failures for every success, in science and pretty much everywhere. Barry explores some of these failures and shows how they lead to our successes.

Of note, we still don't have a cure for influenza, 100 years later. We have yearly vaccinations to prime our bodies to fight off the influenza viruses, but that's not the same as having rid the world of small pox.

Humankind

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 09:05 on 11 July 2020, kitt created this:

This book has an excerpt from it published a couple months ago about what what really happened when six boys were shipwrecked on a crappy island for years, in the way of The Lord of the Flies. Spoiler alert: they were not the horrible fictional characters of that book, rather, they adapted and were incredibly "civilized," a term that, after reading this book, I'm more than a bit put-off with. Maybe "advanced" or "cultured" would work better? Cultivated? Sophisticated! There we go.

Another spoiler alert: you should read this book.

When I started reading this book, I was somewhat rolling my eyes, thinking it was going to be a remake of Enlightenment Now, which was WAAAAY better than the actively-disliked Rational Optimist, but still a "yeah, yeah, I already read this" book. Except Bregman actively talks about Pinker's earlier work that says humans are awful beings, and then says, "welllllllllll, about that."

Which sets the stage for just about every major study you've heard about that tells us humans are awful creatures. I mean, we are, but.... welllllll, actually....

Take the death of Kitty Genovese in New York City in March of 1964, everyone says it is the abdication of responsibility, that when surrounded by a crowd doing nothing as you're being murdered, call upon one person to take action. Except, the whole story about how 37 neighbors ignored her death wasn't accurate: they didn't hear her. And the one who did actually did his best, and she died in a friend's arms. The newspapers reported the made-up news of uncaring neighbors, because it sold more newspapers.

Gates of Fire

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 12:28 on 3 July 2020, kitt created this:

This book was recommended in a recent Ryan Holiday's book-reading newsletter. He had read the book 14 years ago, recently reread it, and was impressed with all the nuances of the book. Along with The Road, I picked up the book from the library. Related: I'm pretty sure that I read the Reading List emails faster than most people on the list, as the books Holiday recommends are usually available when I look for them, and have a backlog of holds about a week later. Is amusing to me.

The book is the telling of the Battle of Thermopylae, more commonly known in today's culture as the battle that the 300 Spartans held off thousands of Persian invaders. Now, I am REALLY not a fan of historical fiction, to the point where I might say the movie is better I dislike historical fiction so much, but, well, this causes me to reconsider my stance. The book is written in third person, and not third person omniscient, which means we see the characters' actions, but don't hear their thoughts. I suspect this is why I enjoyed it, it was a story that didn't go too far.

The basic plot of the book is, well, the Battle of Thermopylae. That story has been told many times, in many mediums. I found the surrounding elements of the book engaging. Pressfield gives us many lessons of Stoicism in the book, while wrapping them into the story, without the dryness of a textbook or the boredom of a lecture. He gives us

Deathless Divide

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 10:14 on 7 June 2020

While reading The Killer Angels, I found myself in a fit of "gosh, I want to read fiction right now." I had enjoyed reading Dread Nation, and recalled a sequel was coming out. That thought, along with the so f'ing long overdue recognition of racial inequality in this country, meant reading this book next was a no-brainer.

And it is so very much worth reading, recommended with delight.

Yes, there are zombies in it. Yes, there is heartbreak in it. No, there isn't a happy ending. Yes, there are many, many social commentary digs at both being a woman, and being black. And yes, there were black people in the Wild Wild West, which was a comment that Ireland makes in the author note at the end of the book, though you wouldn't know it from most of the other western fiction books out there.

This book follows immediately after Dread Nation, with Jane, Katherine, and a number of other Summerland residents fleeing the zombie hoard that broke out in town. What we learn in this tale, which alternates between Jane's and Katherine's perspectives (a style I enjoyed very much), is that Gideon Carr, the rich white boy from the previous book, has a significant part to play in this tale, and that one needs friendships (a lot).

As learned in The War for Kindness, fiction is a gateway drug into empathy. I feel this book does a gentle introduction into the crap a woman deals with as second class citizens, and barely starts to introduce the worse crap non-white people have dealt with in this country.

While I recommend this book more than I recommended Dread Nation, the first is needed to understand this one. Read them in order, if you decide to read them.

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