Category: Articles

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Review

“The Simple Art of Business Etiquette”

Jeffrey L. Seglin

I’ve actually read several books in this genre since my last book review. In general, they all contain the same advice, just phrased slightly differently. This is the one I’m actually choosing to review, though, simply because it was the best-written out of the variety I’ve now sampled.

It’s a hallmark of this genre of productivity/business/self-help books that they’re basically a bulleted list of tips. Given that editors tend to frown upon a manuscript being ten pages of bullet points, though, they all get padded out. Generally, that padding is some mix of anecdotes about the dos-and-don’ts espoused in the bullet points, and some form of interactivity—quizzes, “write your own response”, that kind of thing. Seglin did a great job of balancing those three types of things; each short chapter is a brief intro to the point, an anecdote on the subject, and then a multiple-choice question, followed by an explanation of the answer. It ends with the actual bulleted list, which feels like a nice mix of review and expansion of the already-given points.

The book, like the chapters, is short and easily digestible. My jotted notes from before I started writing this review end with the following: “No eureka moments, but nice gathering together of points.” I stand by that; there’s nothing huge, exciting, or new in this, but it’s useful to have all this disparate advice gathered into one easy-to-read unit. Check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Capricious: Gender Diverse Pronouns”

ed. A.C. Buchanan

Like I mentioned in my most recent read of an anthology, I’m used to them being centered around a specific theme. In this case, the theme is pretty easy to see, and also pretty vague, overall—I think the core concept was “at least one person in the story uses pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers.”

Which gave the authors a lot of room to play around, and it wound up being a really cool variety of stories! From distant-future sci-fi to swords and sorcery, there’s some interesting things that happened in here.

The one that stands out the most, that I feel I’m going to have to go back and reread once or twice more to really wrap my mind around it, is the story of someone moving to a new country and learning the new language. At first, the pronoun bit is easy to miss, until it becomes important to the story: their home country—and, more importantly, their native language—doesn’t have gender as a concept. The character mentions a total of 9 pronouns in their language, which I believe are I/me/mine, you/you(?)/yours, and they/them/theirs. Which is, itself, already an interesting concept, but to make it even more so, the new country they’ve come to has at least three genders, and a gendered language to boot, bringing them to a total of 45 pronouns. (I didn’t count all of them, but think of things like, several different versions of the second person!)

It’s a really effective story; none of the three genders aligns with the masculine/feminine that we’re used to, and so, as the reader, I wound up latching on to the protagonist’s genderless way of speaking, because it’s more familiar. And we get to be confused and frustrated with them, because what the hell are these three genders? Why are there so many pronouns? Why does this language gender the word “you,” for crying out loud, obviously the second-person pronoun refers to the person you are speaking to… and, hey, actually, now that we’re thinking about this… why do we apply gender to things it doesn’t need to be applied to? Why is it so important to us?

That’s what made that story, to me, the best out of the anthology. It gave me a new way to look at an issue that, frankly, I thought I already had a reasonable grasp on. There’s absolutely value to that.

And hey, there’s a bunch of other stories in there too! Some of them thought-provoking, some of them fun, some of them heartwarming; as I said, a very impressive variety. I heartily recommend it. Check it out.1

  1. This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
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Review

“The Last Cities of Earth”

ed. Jennifer Brozek

This was an absolutely fascinating anthology. Generally when I read those, they’re gathered around a single subject area or theme; in this case, though, they all took place in a shared universe.1 In a way, it reminds me of the concept of transformative works—a bunch of different people playing together in the same space, each putting their own twist on it.

And hey, if parts of the concept struck me as a bit ridiculous, it’s not like I’m always sticking to the most robust hard-science-fiction in my reading. Floating cities struck everyone as the best way to survive a global climate apocalypse? Y’know what, sure, why not. It’ll look cool.

Now, thoughts on a couple of the stories:

  • Warriors of the Rainbow was a great choice for ending the book, and totally hits the solarpunk-hopeful vibe that I really like. Sure, there’s realpolitik and a Big Bad, but there’s people working simply on making things better. The kind of thing the world needs!
  • The Flying Dutchman was my personal low point for the book. I just hate zombies. Sure, they followed the protocol to keep it from getting from the airship into the city, but… they found the zombie disease(?) on the ground somewhere. It’s a rather key point of how zombies work that they’re quite content to walk a long ways. That problem isn’t dealt with, and nobody knows what’s coming. Uh oh.
  • Fatherhood was an excellent introduction, and while it has that “that problem isn’t dealt with, and nobody knows what’s coming” vibe to it as well, it’s at least a less-apocalyptic problem. Slightly.
  • Bonsai was, I think, my favorite of the stories. It feels Pratchettian to me; certainly that amount of silliness. And, again, it’s hopeful! Sure, hopeful through a really tangled mess of espionage and high-tech weaponry, but that just makes it better.

So, all told, I really enjoyed this book. Powered through the whole thing in, like, a day; it was a struggle to put it down to get to sleep.2 So hey, go give it a read.3

  1. Well, within limits—clearly there wasn’t a single centralized authority making sure that everything perfectly respected everyone else’s additions to the canon, just look at the variety of names that Las Vegas gets. ↩
  2. Did I wind up stopping after The Flying Dutchman? Yes. Should I have continued after that? Also yes, because c’mon, Grey, load something other than nightmares into your short-term memory before trying to sleep. ↩
  3. This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
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Review

“Owl Be Home for Christmas”

Diane Duane

This is a pretty direct follow-on to my last review, and similarly was written before Christmas. And while it’s the same kind of thing—a small, not saving-the-world scale story in a universe I love—it’s also very different. Because “How Lovely Are Thy Branches” takes place within the main timeline of the books, but this was based on a real event, and was thus locked to a specific point in time. Which happened to be something like a decade later than the rest of the series.

It’s a commentary on how well Duane has written the series to be timeless that it’s easy to forget that, prior to the New Millennium rewrite, these were all taking place in, what, the 80s-90s? That timelessness, though, made it very surprising to realize that, in jumping up to approximately now, a lot of time had passed.

And that’s what really hit me, in reading this. It’s a glimpse at the future of these characters I love. I’ve gone from being along for the ride as they grow up to seeing them as adults, and the places they’ve made for themselves. It’s a bittersweet reunion, and it makes me want to know everything that happened in between. Kit did a doctorate? In what? Nita’s working with Irina? How did that happen? What else have I missed?

All that, and there’s also the sense that the series has grown. I remember that 90s-inflected, Don’t Say Gay treatment of Tom and Carl in the original edition of the first book. In point of fact, I remember explicit statements that they weren’t together, just coworkers who’d decided to buy a house together.

And now, here in 2020, we get to see them waking up together. Poking fun, “are you calling me old?” “I seem to remember telling you I like older men…”

This was such a short story, and it pulled on my heartstrings way more than I was expecting it to. I think this one may be slightly better for someone new to the series than the last, given that there’s less need to actually know who the characters are to understand what’s going on—although it actually has direct references to “How Lovely Are Thy Branches”—but the broader context of how this world works would still be confusing. So hey, why not pick up the box set, it’s a pretty good deal.

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Review

“How Lovely Are Thy Branches”

Diane Duane

As a bit of a peek behind the scenes at how far out I occasionally write these reviews, I read this over Thanksgiving weekend, which was approximately the perfect time to read it. Great way to kick-start the Christmas spirit!

It’s been long enough since I read any of the Young Wizards book that this feels like a strange homecoming; everything is familiar, but some of the details I can’t quite recall. The introduction mentioning where, exactly, in the timeline this took place was a helpful bit of grounding, and I loved some of the little world-building touches like Carmela having employee-level access to the systems at the Crossings. (Which, really, makes a lot of sense—not only is she good friends with the guy running the whole place, but she saved it from an invasion. That’s the sort of thing that does tend to earn one the Keys to the City or equivalent.)

The Interim Errantry series is a nice, lightweight part of the greater universe, and exactly the kind of thing I love to see in more established universes. Everything can’t be huge-scale, this is the apocalypse/save the world type adventures! There’s gotta be time for regular life in between—or, if there isn’t, then it’s worth exploring that these people aren’t able to have regular life. Since that isn’t the case, it’s nice to see some of the little moments like these.

It’s such a nice little story, I love it. I really doubt that it’d be a good starting point for the series, since there’s a whole lot of existing characters that don’t get introduced particularly well, but if you already know the franchise, go read it.

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Review

“Physics of the Impossible”

Michio Kaku

I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of these “explain the whole field in broad strokes” books lately. I do enjoy the twist in this of focusing specifically on impossible things, particularly science fiction tropes; it provides a bit more of a narrative through line, a nice organizational structure to hang the various facts on.

Two caveats to this book:

Firstly, it’s somewhat dated; just from reading, you can narrow down the publishing date to sometime in the mid-aughts. The downside to writing about something as inherently contemporary as “the latest scientific discoveries.”

Secondly, the use of the definite article when referring to theories. It’s never “quantum theory”, always “the quantum theory.” Which I’ve listed as a caveat, but really it falls somewhere between being overly tied to semantics and doing a good job of reminding us that all theories are theories—sure, the theory of gravity is pretty well understood, but it remains a part of the scientific process; it remains a theory.

All told, I found this a pretty good read. The chapters are about the right size for chunks of reading time, and it’s a nice overview of the various impossibilities. (It also feels like it’d be a great reference book for a science fiction writer—it provides enough terminology and understanding to get the realistically-wrong physics you want for good sci-fi.) Give it a go.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Imagine 2200: The 2022 climate fiction collection”

I stumbled across this basically by accident, and let it float around in my to-read pile for a while before finally diving in. It survived a few culls of the queue, and I’m glad it did; the stories here are poignant and hopeful, a look at futures that I hope we’ll see. I’m going to skim through a couple of my favorites.

  • Seven Sisters really brought to mind the phrase “this is the future liberals want.” A non-traditional family, struggling together, trying to make the world a better place just for the joy of doing it.
  • And Now the Shade brought tears to my eyes. Grief and hope, tied up together, and that strange sense of loss that comes before the loss itself.
  • The Florida Project made me think of my sister, in particular the feeling of the first reunion after we’d spent a while living in different states.
  • A Holdout in the Northern California Designated Wildcraft Zone reminds me of the concept of “friendly AI” done really well. A story from the perspective of a literal drone, part of a hive mind, learning compassion.
  • The World Away From the Rain is another one in the “working through grief” category, told from an outsider’s perspective instead. No less effective for that change in viewpoint.

That isn’t all—there are several more stories in the collection, and I quite enjoyed them all, but these were the ones that most grabbed me by the heartstrings. Go check it out.

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Review

“The Rapture of the Nerds”

Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross

Had a bit of a roller coaster in reading this book—it started off well, with the sort of fascinating worldbuilding that I do associate with Doctorow’s visions of the future. By the midpoint, though, I found myself rooting for the vague sense of doom. None of the characters were at all likable, and the idea of everyone being removed from the universe to make it a better place for everyone else started to feel nice.

The second half recovered well, though, and while I still think the protagonist is a bit of an ass, there was at least some personal growth on display. A lot of that arc of the story reminded me of The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl—that same feeling of explorative transhumanism, and trying to apply computer science concepts (and scale!) to sentience. (That “bringing in actual computer science and engineering” stuff also reminds me of Ra, which takes a wildly different approach to this kind of story, but also quite enjoyable.)

Overall, I do totally recommend this book. And, being a Doctorow novel, you can actually pick it up as a free ebook, although I do recommend, for the sake of both the authors and the publisher that they apparently quite like, buying a physical copy.

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Review

“Economics Through Everyday Life”

Anthony Clark

I can make this review pretty quick: it’s a good overview of the field of economics, and is probably worth a read for anyone who wants to have a good foundation in understanding what the heck they’re talking about on the news. The title is a bit odd, though, because the “everyday life” part never makes much of an appearance. It’s just… a regular book about economics. I suppose it’s “everyday” because it explains, like, the concept of the Gini Coefficient without burying you in the math of how it actually works, but still. Not really “everyday life,” just “Economics: Approachably Told.”

Still, a good read, worth reading.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Solutionary Rail”

Bill Moyer & Patrick Mazza

Right off the bat, let me say: the name is not great. Having just read the whole book, which mentions its own name quite often, I feel as if I’ve been somewhat inoculated against how bad a name it is, but even with that, it’s still very clearly not a great name.

That said, the actual concept is, in my opinion, rock-solid. In short, the book is arguing that we should convert from diesel to electric power for our rail networks, and use the existing rail right-of-ways to build the transmission lines that we desperately need in order to make the green energy transition.

In slightly longer:

  • Rail freight is, inherently, way more efficient than truck freight, and hilariously more so than air freight. Rolling resistance is a hell of a thing; the least efficient train is still twice as energy-efficient as the most efficient truck.
  • Making a train run on electricity is a lot easier than making a truck run on electricity. Turns out it’s way easier to run power lines over a train track than it is to run them over every road ever. (And, bonus, electric trains have the exact same benefit electric cars do: way less maintenance.)
  • Truck freight is massively taxpayer-subsidized: by gallon of fuel purchased, a heavy truck pays, very roughly, 1.75x the gas tax of a sedan. But, for every mile driven, that heavy truck does around 5,000x as much damage to the road it’s driving on that the sedan does. tl;dr: the reason our roads need so much work is because of trucks; every time we use taxpayer money to rebuild a road, the trucking industry is getting a big ol’ present.
  • Railway right-of-ways are a Whole Thing, but for historical reasons, are basically a perfectly-interconnected network that ties together every city in the entire country, as well as whole lot o’ non-city land. This description also applies to the sort of long-distance power transmission infrastructure we need. Is it a coincidence I’m putting these two facts in the same bullet point? Not even remotely!

By these facts combined, we arrive at the argument that a) we should be using a whole lot more rail freight, b) we should be electrifying as much of our rail network as possible, and c) we shouldn’t be afraid to have government step in, because the competition literally could not exist without the massive government intervention that is the creation and maintenance of the interstate highway system.

The bit about using rail routes to also do power transmission is just a really clever way to combine two big projects and get them to pay for each other. Electrified rail means power companies have a brand-new, large-scale customer; siting power transmission literally on top of that large-scale customer not only provides guaranteed demand, it also significantly reduces the amount of time the power companies have to spend shoveling through the horrific mess that is the approvals process for power transmission.1

There’s some weird parts to the argument, namely the way that the book bends over backwards to never yell at the Class I rail carriers for their horrible business practices. Sure, there’s an appendix about it, courtesy of the rail unions, but within the actual text, they’re very careful not to say “and hey, maybe if Wall Street spent less time turning rail freight into the highest-profit-margin industry in the country and instead focused on making it actually good at its job, these problems wouldn’t be as bad!” But then, given that the target demographic of this book is Warren Buffet (owner of Berkshire Hathaway, owner of BNSF, monopolist of the Seattle-Chicago rail route that the authors have identified as the best starting point for electrifying the rail network), it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he’s kinda the villain of the story.2

Overall, I found this a fascinating read, and I heartily recommend checking out their website, if not the whole book. (There’s a video summary, but you can also get a free download of the book if you, like me, saw the concept and went “oh I have got to know more about this.”)

And then, as a secondary call to action, write to your representatives (state and federal!), your governor, and whoever you know that owns some shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Point out that, hey. Trains. They’re pretty cool. We should do more with them.

  1. As a side note, we desperately need to fix that. Hey, Congress, get on that! ↩
  2. And, frankly, he really should be listening to the idea of using the rail right-of-ways to connect all the wind farms he owns to, y’know, places people actually want to buy that electricity. If you’re gonna be a capitalist on that scale, at least actually get the benefits of vertical integration! ↩
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Review

“Augie & the Green Knight”

Zach Weinersmith

Y’know, I can’t say that I’ve ever before read a children’s book that includes a mathematical proof as an appendix. But then, Weinersmith is an interesting writer like that.

The core of the story is an old Arthurian myth, Gawain undertaking a quest that comes down to an exploitation of the knight’s code. There’s a certain amount of adaptation for young audiences possible from that, but where Weinersmith really shone was in splitting the story to also follow the Green Knight. Or rather, to follow Augie as she tries to teach the Green Knight not to, y’know, behead people willy-nilly. A bit difficult an argument to make to someone who, upon being beheaded, waves cheerfully, picks up his head, and reattaches it with about as much effort as one puts into reattaching the head that fell off a snowman.

The writing style actually feels very Pratchettian in style—not just because the footnotes, but because it’s got that same sort of “approachable for kids, with jokes that will make them laugh, but not as hard as they’ll make their parents laugh” thing going on.

This feels like a great book for the folks the age it’s aimed at, and I also enjoyed reading it. (Someone remind me, in a couple years, to get a print copy and give it to some of the young folks in my extended family.) Check it out!1

  1. This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
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Review

“The Fifth Risk”

Michael Lewis

It took me a bit to realize that this was a reread—I thought that I’d just read some of the marketing materials when the book first came out, maybe an excerpt, but no—by the time I got to the end of the book and it continued to feel familiar, I had to admit that I’d read it before and just missed marking it as read in my big list o’ books.

Still, it holds up well! Honestly, I think it’s almost more interesting now, during the Biden administration, than it was during the Trump years. Sure, it felt more urgent when these things were being actively undermined, but now, it works well as a reminder that our institutions are still fragile. Just because everything is alright in this moment doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. Hanford’s still got about 100 years and $100 billion in work necessary to clean it up; publicly-funded databases are still one executive order away from being inaccessible to the public that funded them. The core function of government is to handle these big problems, the things that business incentives just don’t work for.

Given the subject matter, it feels like this book would be a tome, something that’ll take you ages to work through. In fact, it’s quite short and easy to read—and, in a way, reminds me of some of McPhee’s stuff. It’s an exploration of the huge, banal things that the US government does every day to keep the world turning.

Overall, it’s an interesting read, and not a huge time investment. I heartily recommend it; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Unseen Academicals”

Terry Pratchett

Taking a break from my reading new books to reread a favorite of mine! Some friends of mine took part in a recreational soccer league recently, and watching their games put me in the mood for Unseen Academicals. And, upon finishing the reread, I was surprised to find that I’d never posted a review of it.

As with everything Pratchett wrote, the book is a delight to read, a perfect blend of serious story and characters with comedy. It is, frankly, utterly unsurprising that he was awarded a knighthood for his writing; it’d be a shame if he hadn’t been honored.

The thing that makes Unseen Academicals such a long-standing favorite for me is Nutt. And now, in reading it again, there’s a part of me that doesn’t like how neatly his arc is tied together in the end. It’s hardly realistic—that degree of anxiety doesn’t just go away like that. But then, it’s a work of fiction, and more importantly, it’s telling a story. A story has to have a neat ending, or it won’t feel complete.

Still, though, I’ve always loved the portrayal of his fighting through it. The Sisyphean struggle to be worthy:

“But he makes wonderful candles,” she added quickly. “He’s always making things. It’s as if… worth is something that drains away all the time so you have to keep topping it up.”

I really can’t say how much I adore this book. I’ve given copies of it to people before, and likely will again. Go read it.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“The Willpower Instinct”

Kelly McGonigal

The organization of this book felt a bit weird, but I think that was more of an ebook implementation detail than anything to do with the actual content. And, overall, I thought it was interesting—I even jotted down notes in a couple places, interesting ideas that could be useful to apply.

Sitting here writing this, though, I take issue with the title. It doesn’t feel like it fits with the content; there’s no instinct to willpower discussed, really, just things about the evolutionary psychology of the concept of willpower. Can you call something an instinct if you’re specifically writing a book about how to train yourself to have it? Is my ability to type on this keyboard instinctual after the years of practice, or is it robust muscle memory? I’m firmly on the side of the latter.

That aside, some interesting tips from the book:

  • While meditating, focus on the sensation of breathing. And, importantly: The point of meditation is being bad at it. The goal isn’t to think about nothing but your breath; the goal is to practice drawing your focus back to your breath after it shifts elsewhere, and notice those shifts happening.
  • Slowing your breathing to the range of 4-6 breaths per minute, without holding your breath, can help increase your heart rate variability. Heart rate variability may or may not correlate directly with your available willpower.
  • When considering short- versus long-term benefits, loss aversion tends to bite us—setting aside the short-term gain in favor of the long-term one feels like a loss of the short-term gain, even though neither one actually exists yet. You can make this work in your favor, though: examine the long-term gain first, and focus on the short-term option as “why would I give up the long-term thing for this?”
  • It is impossible to Not Think About something. (“Don’t think about white bears” was the experiment the book cited.) The general concept is called “ironic rebound”—you try not to think about it, and think about it even more. Instead, notice the thought, give yourself permission to think it… and then move on.

There were, of course, a few other useful little concepts like that, but those were the ones that most caught my interest. Beyond that, the book did the usual pop psychology book thing, repeating the same point over and over with a variety of stories and angles. While I grasp that it’s a good teaching technique, I do sometimes wish I could get the 4-page pamphlet version instead of the couple-hundred-pages edition. But then, that requires picking out the right example each time, and the trick is in knowing which one that is for each individual reader.

Overall, I liked the book; it was interesting to read some of the psychology of focus and willpower. If you’re interested in that kind of thing—or just want some tips for kicking a bad habit—check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“My Evil Mother”

Margaret Atwood

I was expecting something a lot more depressing, given Atwood’s most famous work, but this was actually quite touching. It’s a very short read, and as far as I can tell, free in Kindle edition, so go ahead and grab it.