October 2022 - Page 2 of 2

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

by Terry Pratchett

I’m not very familiar with Terry Pratchett. I think I tried a few of his books way back in college years (had a roommate who was a fan) and the humor just felt tiresome to me. So this is the first one I’ve read completely, and I really enjoyed it, in spite of (or maybe because of) the dark tones.

Set in a fantasy world (Discworld- again, unfamiliar to me but that didn’t matter), this is kind of a Pied Piper retelling with a huge twist. The reader meets a gang of talking rats, teamed up with an ambitious cat (who can also talk) and a gentle-mannered boy who plays a pipe. They run a scam, infiltrating towns with their rats that appear to be causing a terrible infestation, then of course the boy piper offers his services, “leads” the rats away, and they share the spoils afterwards. Maurice the cat runs the whole thing (and seems to be the only one who really cares about the money, odd detail- had me wondering exactly why he was saving up for “retirement” ?) Much later in the story you get filled in on why Maurice and the rats can talk- because it’s obvious that most animals in this world don’t. So the group comes to a new town, gets ready to run their scam, and everything goes wrong. Something else is going on in this town, and the talking rats are in danger. The rats are trying their usual skills to deal with the situation, but it becomes more than they can handle. The cat at first just wants to get out of it all with his fur intact and perhaps money in his paws still, but has to decide at the end if he really cares more about the rats’ welfare. And the boy ends up in an unwelcomed partnership with a local girl who’s obsessed with storytelling- she wants every situation to follow some classic trope– she talks a lot and acts bossy but is surprised to find that the boy has some answers of his own in the end. Really funny how the girl’s character kept breaking the fourth wall in a way, commenting on particular aspects of telling stories while being in a story. The only character that didn’t really stand out to me much was Maurice for some reason. I was more intrigued by the talking rats and the dilemmas their intelligence presented them. All round a fun tale, with a lot to say about human nature, how awful we treat rats (the ones seen as vermin), compassion and fair play in the end.

I think I might just need to read some more Pratchett.

Borrowed from my teenager’s bookshelf.

Rating: 3/5

340 pages, 2001

More opinions:
Charlotte’s Library
Becky’s Book Reviews
SFF Book Reviews
The Wertzone

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi

This is Your Mind on Plants

by Michael Pollan

This book- wasn’t quite what I expected. It’s about three different plants that can alter our state of consciousness- namely poppies (a downer), caffeine (a stimulant) and mescaline (a hallucinogenic). I thought I was going to read a lot of facts surrounding these plants, their chemicals, and how they have affected mankind. I did get some of that, and what there was, pretty interesting. Though the history kind of felt like it dragged on and on (the rise of opium addiction- in the 1800’s it was despised “opium dens” and now opioids in painkillers, how coffee affected work production in industrial-revolution-era Europe, the culture of tea-drinking in Asia, and how use of peyote is intertwined with the Native American Church – only just over a hundred years old). But what I mostly got was detailed accounts of the author’s personal experiences with these substances. In the first case, it was a bit about gardening, and a lot more about his paranoia on being found out- it’s okay to grow poppies in your yard, it’s not okay to extract the opium from them. A lot about involvement with lawyers, fear of legal action, and finally he went ahead and made a tea, then described what it felt like, promptly went out afterwards and destroyed his plants. Second part, more of us can relate to I’m sure- all about the effects of coffee and to a lesser extent, tea. Author had drunk coffee habitually for so long, that he went off it for three months (very abruptly, too) so he could experience the withdrawl, how his mind might function differently without it, and the jolt of resuming its use. His main observation? after getting it out of his system, he functioned fine (and slept a lot better) but mostly missed the rituals and habits surrounding coffee drinking. The very day he resumed, drinking one espresso created an instant urge to have another, and he realized just how addictive it really is. Last part is about peyote, but out of respect for the Native American religion, he refrained from trying that and instead got himself invited to a ceremony that used another species of cactus which also produces mescaline. This section of the book was- a bit unsettling. While it was interesting to hear about what the effects felt like for him, and the ceremony surrounding it, the whole thing felt very heavily on the side of cultural appropriation and it made me uncomfortable.

So: a lot more personal details than I really was interested in. Oddly, much of it sounded familiar to me, though I’m sure I haven’t read this book before. Maybe I browsed it once and decided to read it later? or perhaps details from someone else’s review stuck in my head (but I couldn’t find one). I thought perhaps some bits from this book were present in a previous book of his, but looking back at the ones noted in my blog, I don’t think so. Maybe I heard it on an NPR spot, hm.

Borrowed from the public library. Audiobook, author’s voice, 7.5 hours listening time.

Rating: 3/5

288 pages, 2021

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Gardening / Food

two Wysockis

Finally I have done some Charles Wysocki puzzles. Now I see why they’re so popular! Even though I’m not really a fan of the images (they’re charming but not ones I really want to leave sitting out to look at for days after finishing) they sure were fun to put together, and not too difficult. Lots of interesting things going on, little details, variety of colors and visual textures. Funny to see how opinions differ on these. I’ve seen other puzzlers comment that they love the pictures but finding assembling the puzzles tedious. Some get tired of doing all the big houses and shops in the scenery, other people dread the trees. I don’t mind the houses and like

doing the foliage, but I find all the little figures of people persnickity- having to peer at the box or poster to find out who goes where, whose hand is this, whose shoes, etc. Both are

made by Buffalo Games with 1,000 pieces

“Olde Buck’s Country” and “Fireside Companions”. (I like the first one a bit better. That huge red building in “Fireside Companions” is just kinda an eyesore to me)

thrift store find and Library puzzle swap

Tags: puzzles

Hallucinations

by Oliver Sacks

Fascinating and strange, what the mind can create seemingly right in front of your eyes. This book is all about different types of hallucinations that people experience- from many different causes. Oliver Sacks, neurologist, describes case studies of patients, as well as his own visual distubrances caused by migranes and intentional drug use (back in the 60’s and 70’s). Each chapter has a focus on the type of hallucination- some caused by illness, others by brain damage, sensory deprivation or chemical influences. I was surprised at how specific the different types of hallucinations are. For example, before the onset of a migrane many people smell certain things very distinctly. Other people see geometric patterns behind their eyes or superimposed on everything they look at. Still others see flashes of light. I can’t remember the cause of these (the book was so long and detailed) but some hallucinations make people see objects or figures either huge in size, or diminutive – little people marching around or going up and down stairs. This sounded so curious, I’d never heard of it. Sacks relates how the brain often imagines things just on the verge of sleep- and for some people this is heightened, so they are convinced they see figures standing in the room, or have strange sensations of shrinking or expansion (it’s very common but most people don’t remember it). Odd distortions of perception are also explored in the chapter about phantom limbs, and another about out-of-body experiences- both of which have biological explanations, what is going on in the brain that cases these perceptions. Including explanations of hallucinations of figures coinciding with an overwhelming sense of benevolence or euphoria, that many could interpret as a religious experience. I think what fascinates me most, is how hard the brain works to make sense out of things when there is no sensory input for it to use- so that people in solitary confinement for example, or deprived of their sight, will start seeing faces or brilliant colors. There’s also details in here that make me marvel, at how complex the mechanism of vision is, and how delicately the brain interprets it for us- and so easily it can go awry, making us see things that aren’t there (likewise smell or hear, he deals briefly with olfactory and auditory hallucinations too).

So much in this book I can’t even touch on or explain, as admittedly I struggled to understand some of it myself. Not that the author makes it hard to comprehend, but sometimes it goes so quickly through the material that I feel I missed some parts and had to backtrack. I listened to this one as an audiobook (read aloud by Dan Woren, ten hours) and certainly want to have it in hand someday on paper, to experience more thoroughly.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Medical/Health, Nonfiction (general)

Animals Behaving Badly

Boozing Bees, Cheating Chimps, Dogs with Guns and Other Beastly True Tales

by Linda Lombardi

A bunch of little snippets about how immoral, depraved, unfair, conniving and murderous animals can be. If you tend to think nature is full of beautiful, noble, innocent creatures living in perfect balance and harmony, and that your cute cuddly pet would never bite you, well this book is out to prove you wrong. Vicious hummingbirds, drunk bees, cheating songbirds, deceptive apes, bullying and abusive dolphins, faithless penguins, uncooperative elephants, thieving animals of all kinds, and the list goes on. I think the author has a good point- most animals are out to get what they want (food, sex, etc) and sometimes a dog really will bite the hand that feeds it. Just because a panda is cute doesn’t mean it wants a hug (yes, someone climbed into a zoo enclosure and tried this). The book is a breeze to read through, and kinda funny, but also dissatisfying. I’d heard most of these stories before- or very similar ones. They’re related so briefly you feel some important details must always have been left out. The formatting is kind of strange, with the regular narrative text broken up by other text boxes that just tell other stories, interrupting the flow of reading. And some of the stories were really dumb, to be honest. A dog that steps on a gun and kills its owner- pure accident. Not intentional on the dog’s part. So how is that “behaving badly”? On the other hand, the stories about people trying to help animals who didn’t actually need, or evidently didn’t want their help, really made me laugh.

Rating: 2/5

212 pages, 2011

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

Gulp

Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

by Mary Roach

I finally made it through a Mary Roach book! Yes, it was easier read on pages, than listened to via audiobook. For some reason this way my brain was able to skip over all the tedious humor. It did get a bit tiresome still, whether from the gross factor or the writing style I’m not sure- but I took breaks and read three other books in the middle of this one. This author has an odd slant on things. Definitely seems to just be satisfying her curiosity, and thus by extension the readers’, though I’m sure most others, like me, never realized they had any interest in the things Mary Roach delves into. She’ll be talking along almost normally about the pressure of your jaws in chewing and how delicate and instantaneous the subconscious control of that is- and then suddenly dive into another subject entirely, on a weird tangent, it’s like constantly tripping out of the converstion and falling down a series of rabbit holes you never knew existed. With plenty of strange and obscure details.

The focus here is on how we eat- what attracts us to food, cultural norms and taboos, how the senses dictate what we like, why crunchy foods are satisfying, how food scientists decide what pet food will taste like, how strong are the stomach’s digestive juices, can parasites chew their way out of a stomach, people who put objects up their nether regions (for smuggling or pleasure), reasons people were given nutrients that way, an absurd amount of text spent on flatulence, why many animals digest things twice (especially rodents who eat their own droppings) and SO MUCH MORE. More than you ever wanted to know. Not sure what was more stomach-turning, reading about awful experiments done on animals and patients alike in times not-so-distant past, or reading about some unpleasant ailments of the digestive system. I was a bit miffed at how flippantly dismissive the author was about gluten intolerance, and I suspect people who suffer from other maladies will feel the same about her attitude towards other things in this book that are too close to home for them. It’s all very flippant, snarky, gleeful in the details (often when you didn’t want that) and yes, very satisfying if you were dying of curiosity to know some things.

Honestly I think the best part of the book is two pages where she discusses the apparent source for myths about fire-breathing dragons. That was fantastic. But I need a good long break before I read another book by this author, ha.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

348 pages, 2013

More opinions:
Ardent Reader
Dear Author
anyone else?

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Medical/Health, Nonfiction (general)

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

Native American kid Arnold Spirit Junior lives on a reservation in Spokane, Washington. He likes drawing comics, reading, and messing around with his best friend (skirting danger by climbing a hundred-foot-plus pine tree for example). He describes how dead-end life feels on the reservation- seeing so many people around him sunk in alcoholism and poverty, attending more than forty funerals in less than fifteen years. Decides he wants something better and transfers to an all-white high school off the reservation. He has to hitchike or walk most days to get there, since his family usually doesn’t have enough money to put gas in the car. Adjustment is tough. Kids at the new school ignore him, or tease. People back home resent him for what they see as a betrayal. He just wants more opportunity. He makes the baseketball team but then has to go up against the team he used to be on- from the rez high school. Full of guilt for trying to live one foot on each side of a fence, as it were. So much sad stuff in this book- deaths in the tribe, sister who moves away, best friend now hates him, etc. Yet there’s also great strength in the family, the traditions. And everything is treated lightly- held at arm’s length by the humor (or at least, that’s how it felt to me). I get why this book was banned in some places- the narrator is a teenage boy and he talks frankly about things like masturbation and staring at women’s breasts – it wasn’t terribly offensive. More offensive is what I learned afterwards, of the author’s behavior. I still like the book okay, but now have no interest in anything else by this writer.

Rating: 3/5

230 pages, 2007

More opinions:
Book Chase
Good Books and Good Wine
Reading on a Rainy Day
Book Smugglers
Bloggin Bout Books
Bookfoolery

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Young Adult

Month: October 2022

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

This is Your Mind on Plants

two Wysockis

made by Buffalo Games with 1,000 pieces

Hallucinations

Animals Behaving Badly

Boozing Bees, Cheating Chimps, Dogs with Guns and Other Beastly True Tales

Gulp

Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

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