Hello, friends!

I hope you are all reveling in the summertime, sunshine, ice cold coffee, and good books.

Below: an assortment of links collected over the past few weeks, some notable connections and themes from my readings, and the list of books I read this June. Titles are linked to book notes, as usual!

Any summer (mis)adventures for y'all recently? Interesting reads or projects? Miscellaneous thoughts or comments? I'd love to hear it all!

Cheers,

Maya

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Links

• A fascinating conversation between two photographers on deconstructing the colonial gaze, framed around a project on photographing maritime refugees

• America’s falling birth rate may not be a problem yet. But when it is, there are two ways to deal with it— and one involves investing in people that are already born.

• The last paragraph of this article on the new TV series Physical made me stop and think for awhile:

  [W]hat if we didn’t want to look the way we’ve always been told we should look by a $78 billion industry with a very vested interest in supplying an unattainable ideal: sinewy and razor-hipped, hairless and waist-trained and uncomfortable? What are all the other things we could want instead? Where would we even begin?

• Fun fact: the first RV was made from a fallen chunk of a redwood tree, and was called the Travel Log— and, coincidently came across this article on Charles Kellogg: the man who created the Travel Log, and could also supposedly put out fires by singing to them.

• Better ways to understand big numbers, whether that’s the US budget or geological time scales

• More fun facts: a list of word pairs that, surprisingly, share a common etymology

• “I love, and also fear, the exquisite mess of biology.” The value of doing biology beyond ultra-controlled, artificially-sterilized conditions. (Thanks, Mom!)

• Type your name using this New York City tree alphabet— or if you’re feeling like a leap across the pond, the new Irish version. Artist Katie Holten crafted these beautiful collections with drawings of both native and non-native trees that grow in each location.

• Another collection of alphabets, these all mathematically or puzzle-ly inspired. I’m partial to the Ada font, what about you?

• A cool graphics campaign for the Euros on how migration has shaped football

Connections

• The work of economist Elin Ostrom in outlining how people can effectively and sustainably use common resources was discussed in both Mission Economy and Beloved Beasts, then was cited as a key example of how removing an idea led to a more effective approach in Subtract.
• Coming across this article from 2015 about loneliness that discusses Sherry Turkle’s work on the digital existence just as I started reading her memoir, The Empathy Diaries.
• The psychology of bowerbirds discussed in The Bird Way and Subtract; great auks in The Bird Way and Beloved Beasts.
• Reading How Beautiful We Were and The Arsonist’s Fire simultaneously is bringing up some parallels between the colonial dynamics in the Middle East and in Africa, both in how they manifest at the geopolitical scale and how they play out within family and tribal ties. This seems so foreign to our way of life at first, but it’s interesting to consider how these very human patterns show up in today’s polarized and contentious American culture, as well. The forms of oppression and allegiances may look different, but the structures are so similar.
• The role of metaphors in our understanding and experience of reality discussed in Sand Talk and Madness, Rack, and Honey— in both cases, metaphors are most powerful as closed loop exchanges between two items or ideas, and can constitute a physical event.

Book notes

• The Office of Historical Corrections — Danielle Evans

  • My first foray in quite some time into short stories, and I was pleasantly surprised! Evans quickly crafts and introduces her characters, who are both complex and sympathetic (this might now be the right word— I liked them, is what I’m trying to say!). Each narrative is refreshingly subtle, treating heavy subjects of race, class, and belonging with gentleness and grace.
  • Title refers to a fascinating idea, a proposed “national network of fact-checkers and historians, a friendly citizen army devoted to making the truth so accessible and appealing it could not be ignored. We had started as a research institute, loosely under the direction of the Library of Congress—an NIH for a different sort of public health crisis.”

• *The Bird Way* — Jennifer Ackerman

  • We’ve been captivated by two little birds building a nest in a window planter on our deck for the past day, and they inspired me to open up this spontaneous library pick. Curious to see how it complements What It’s Like To Be a Bird.

• The Woman Is No Man — Etaf Rum

  • A beautifully-narrated audiobook starring captivating characters and richly-described cultures. The overall themes— of immigration, sexism, family values— are addressed rather bluntly, but it’s a nice change of pace to some of the more abstract storylines I’ve read of late. However, gradual complexity built as the narratives continued on over time, new voices intersecting with the old, adding additional layers of motivations and cultural forces— and this gave a fascinating sense of how seemingly unacceptable traditions and beliefs surrounding the acceptance of abuse in relationships, arranged marriages, and the scorning of daughters become entrenched. A slow-paced, enjoyable, but not life-altering listen.
  • I was disappointed with the anticlimactic conclusion, which frames going to college as a panacea for the intense, cultural oppression of women the characters face— and by the alternate reality ending? Not sure what really happened there.

• Mission Economy — Maria Mazzucato

  • Long-awaited read by this experience by economist Maria Mazzucato, offering a clear and novel roadmap to rethinking our systems of governance and capitalism. Mazzucato systematically builds the case for ambitious, targeted government action to support and catalyze the private sector to work towards public values.

• Beloved Beasts — Michelle Nijhuis

  • This came highly recommended, and I really wanted to like it. I found Nijhuis’s thesis to be compelling, and appreciated her care with using words like “nature” and “wild.” But I struggled to follow the stories within each chapter, and could not got drawn into the book for the first half— I suspect, for some reason, the large proportion if proper nouns to be a factor? Once we got to the time of Aldo Leopold, Stewart Udall, and Rachel Carson, about halfway through, however, the readability for me shifted, and I was much more engaged.

• The Empathy Diaries — Sherry Turkle

  • It’s fascinating to the reflections of a psychologist across her life, especially one who studies the interactions of human connection and the digital age. Turkle’s memoir balances between being a case study of herself with honest storytelling in this genuine, unique, and authentic literary self-portrait.

• The Arsonist’s City — Hala Alyan

  • Started in media res with a spark in the vein of many of the novels set in Palestinian I’ve read have, then jumped to a seemingly unrelated, drama-filled American household, to a struggling rock star, and beyond. The writing is fluid, characters complex and intertwined, and me, excited to read on.

• Subtract — Leidy Klotz

  • A rare popular psychology book with a somewhat novel idea at its heart! Klotz takes walks us through our bias against the act of “subtracting,” rigorously building her case from the ground up. His storytelling approach to presenting his research process and results make the book memorable, personable, and engaging without sacrificing the transfer of information.
  • I tried to practice my own subtractive thinking by limiting how often I interrupted my reading to take notes— somewhat unsuccessfully at first, (as I pause to record this thought), but definitely became more aware of the disruption.
  • The science became somewhat less novel in the second half, but easy enough to skim and retain the important points! Prime example of less is more.

• No One Is Talking About This — Patricia Lockwood

  • “Absurdity” is the first word that comes time mind. Lockwood captures the essence of the Internet: the bizarre, performative nature that no one’s sure they understand but everyone pretends they’re above, the uncanny scattering of pithy moments lost amidst the obscene.
  • In the book’s second part (and introduction of the first thing I’d label as “plot”), “real world” features somewhat more prominently— through discussions of parenthood, genetic disorders, climate change, abortion— though still embedded into the web of online culture we were so immersed in previously. With this unique structure, Lockwood offers an intriguing exploration of the strange, contradictory dynamic of living in the Internet age.
  • Memorable:
    • It is a mistake to think that other people don’t live as deeply as you— and you don’t even live that deeply.
    • "What did we have a right to expect from this life? What were the terms of the contract?"

• How Beautiful We Were — Imbolo Mbue

  • Mbue tackles the intractable issues of colonialism and climate change in this novel, set in a fictional African village being exploited by an American oil company. She crafts a modern myth, with her sparse, direct language conveying timelessness that is intriguingly juxtaposed with the contemporary context. The style is direct yet still sophisticated, somewhat solemn in tone, and carries the raw grief of her characters with exceptional, painful clarity.

  • The book in full reminded me somewhat of One Hundred Years of Solitude in its sweeping, generational, and mythological qualities—with a primary contrast being that modern technology took the role of magic.

    I hear no other voices except those of the past and the future. They sit on either side of me, fighting over my mind. Remember what happened, the past says. Consider what might happen, the future says. The past always wins, because what it says is true—what happened lives within me, it surrounds me, ever present. I cannot trust the future and its uncertainty.

• The Library Book — Susan Orlean

  • I so enjoyed The Orchid Thief that I took the chance on this audiobook next— and am initially, once again, appreciating Orlean’s talent for mixing memoir, journalism, history. She tells the story of the devastating fire of the Los Angeles Public Library with compassion to both the people and books involved, though her writing far exceeds her ability as an audiobook reader…
  • Lovely idea that Orlean proposes at the end, that in the near future our books may all come from digital sources, but libraries will remain as our town halls, of sorts.

• The Scout Mindset — Julia Galef

  • A variation on the theme of “humans are very biased, and here’s how to be better.” Haven’t learned anything completely new, but it never hurts to reinforce that idea, and to have an additional framework to identify and work towards a more truth-seeking way of thinking. Plus, I really like term and metaphor of a “scout mindset!” Most useful parts, I think, were on counterfactual thought experiments and quantifying your level of certainty, and will try to implements those tools more frequently in my thinking.

• Sand Talk — Tyson Yunkaporta

  • As Yunkaports puts it, he is “not reporting on Indigenous Knowledge systems for a global audience's perspective… [he is] examining global systems from an Indigenous Knowledge perspective.” A fascinating exploration of a new way of living and experiencing the world, one that embraces complexity and interaction and open systems.

• Madness, Rack, and Honey — Mary Ruefle

  • Poetic words about poetry and life. I wish language came to me in this way, but it does not, and I’ll treasure reading things like this even more because of it!

• High Conflict — Amanda Ripley

  • Ripley dives into the psychology of the lose-lose, self-perpetuating, aimless conflict we find ourselves embroiled in so often. The individual she highlights are definitely the most interesting part of the book, as she doesn’t report much groundbreaking insights— but as usual, it’s always worth it to have another framework to be able to access the valuable skills she covers to work through cognitive traps like high conflict.