2021 Another Year of Solitude - Reading Summary

Books have always been an escape, a solace, companions to me.  I needed all of those this year.  I read 53 books either partially or completely, about my usual annual number, mostly reading at night before going to sleep.

I had 21 fiction reads, leaning toward life lessons.  I read  many more non-fiction books, with quite a few about people (9) and many in the sciences (12) .  Here's 2021's top picks.  (click on title for full review of each):

1) The Midnight Library - Matt Haig
2) The Codebreaker - Walter Isaacson
3) The End of Men - Christina Sweeney Baird
4) Anxious People - Fredrik Backman
5) Blockchain Revolution - Don Tapscott

I've already gotten 2 books from my TBR list to begin reading for 2022!  If you have any favorites from 2021 let me know.

The Genetic Lottery - Kathryn Paige Harden

Subtitle: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality

This is a very dense, detailed, well-documented treatise advocating for the analysis of DNA's impact on social and behavioral issues to improve social equality.  I think I understand and grasp some of it but much was difficult to unpack without a background in scientific research.  Her argument is that scientific evidence, namely polygenetic indexes and twin studies show that certain traits are inherited, such as education and income achievement, though they are both heavily influenced as well by environmental factors.  Given this fact, she advocates for equalizing the disparities this causes by providing social programs that acknowledge the differences due to both genetic and environmental factors.

It's a touchy subject because it's been hijacked by eugenic proponents to claim nothing can be done about social inequity if it is affected by genetics.  I was not convinced of her arguments.

Quotes and Notes:

Ploygenic indices are the human version of estimated breeding values in agriculture.

All of your genome, then, can be considered a form of luck in your life.

In 2013 journal Science published results....and found three genetic variants that were associated with educational attainment...rs9320913, rs11584700, rs4851266

...I have students practice talking about psychology studies using the following language: 'This study was about Construct X, as measured by Y.'.

..sometime between 500 and 200 BC, as the Sumerian were developing a written alphabet and Egypt's first dynasty was being established, you reach an even more remarkable point - everyone  alive then, if they left any descendants at all, was a common ancestor of everyone alive now.  If we trace our family trees back far enough, they all become one and the same.

There are on average, 33 of these recombinations events that occur every time a genome is transmitted to the next generation.  So, the 22 chromosomes that you inherited [from your father]can be broken down into 22 + 33 = 55 different chunks, each of which can be traced back to on of your two paternal grandparents.

...the U.S. Census, which began in 1790, did not allow people to pick more than one race until 2000.

Why are inequalities that are related to your genes more acceptable than inequalities rooted in the social circumstances of your birth?  After all, as I've argued...both are accidents of birth, forms of luck over which a person has no control.

[sign] Fair Isn't everybody getting the same thing, Fair is everybody getting what they need in order to be successful. 

[picture] Equality (3 people standing next to fence on same height box but people are different heights and only those tall enough can see over fence) vs. Equity (same 3 people where shorter ones stand on boxes to be the same height as tallest an all can see over the fence).

...one lesson is that figuring out which specific environments make a difference, for whom, at what point in the life span, is a harder problem than it might appear at first, because most of those environments are braided together with genetic differences between people.

[Ben Domingue, social scientist] 'genetics are a useful mechanism for understanding why people from relatively similar backgrounds end up different...but genetics is a poor tool for understanding why people from manifestly different starting points don't end up the same.'

The biggest contribution of genetics...is a set of tools to do basic research by measuring and statistically controlling for a variable - DNA

inherently valuable vs socially valued - used in describing whether a gene is good or bad based on perspective

,,,use in military of people with ASDs (autism spectrum disorders) who have heightened attention to visual detail and pattern can be put to use scanning satellite images.

I hope to start the conversation about...anti-eugenicist.  5 principles: 1) stop wasting time, money, talent and tools that could be used to improve people's lives, 2) use genetic info to improve opportunity, not classify people 3) use genetic information for equity, not exclusion 4) don't mistake being lucky for being good and 5) consider what you would do if you didn't know who you would be.

Published: 2021  Read: December 2021  Genre: Sociology 

Brooklyn - Colm Tobin

 A young Irish woman immigrates to America for a better life and evolves as a person as she struggles to understand her new environment and yearns for home.  I was intrigued and frustrated by this story at the same time.  Eilis is thoughtful and ponders her actions and those of others and too often choses non-action, non-response.  A coming of age in America story that eventually fell flat for me.

Published: 2009  Read: December 2021  Genre: Fiction

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World - Laura Imai Messina

 I loved this story, though it was sad, it shows the evolution of grief from different perspectives and the ultimate ability of people to go on.  Yui, a young mother, loses her small daughter and mother during a tsunami.  She travels to the site to a phone booth where those who have lost someone talk to their relatives on the "wind phone" - unconnected but voices are carried on the wind.  She meets Takeshi who has lost his wife to illness and his daughter to silence.  They heal themselves and each other sharing their grief.  A touching, yet uplifting read.

Quotes:

p 36 - "Time may pass, but the memory of the people we've loved doesn't grow old."

p 65 - "There must be an expiration date on the soul like there is on the body."

p 75 - "Yui knew that the strongest kind of love is the kind that is taken for granted."

p 106 - "A famous citation from the American psychotherapist Virginia Satir (1916-1988) reads: 'We need four hugs a day for survival.  We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. And we need twelve hugs a day for growth."

p 111 - ...the things you end up missing most about somebody when they're gone are their flaws: the most ridiculous annoying things."

p 158 - "Anyone who has experience great grief wonders at some point which is more difficult, learning or unlearning ...now she was sure it was the second."

p 223 - "As Yui opened the door onto the dense silence of her house, she concluded that memories were like objects...sooner or later, they always floated back to the surface."

p 260 [Yui on the radio] "You speak to people, but you don't know who's listening to you.  But you come into their home and make them happy anyway. 'I don't know about happy, but they certainly feel like they have some company.' 'Isn't that the same thing?'"

p 364 - "Ultimately, that was what he wished for everyone who came there--that each person would find a place where they could tend to their pain and heal their wounds.  That place would be different for each one of them."

Published: 2021  Read: December 2021  Genre: Fiction

Maiden Voyages - Sian Evans

 Sub-title: Magnificent ocean liners and the women who traveled and worked aboard them

I'd found out about this book while listening to a genealogy zoom discussion.  The author's great-uncle was a ship's captain and her research into his life led to the book.  I have to admit, I only read about a third.  Evans goes into great detail to document the lives and history of the times of the great ocean liners and that detail became tedious.  Unlike some authors who can make history riveting ( Erik Larson comes to mind), she does a poor job of making a story out of the facts.  I found it to be a litany of "so and so" did "such and such on this date" over and over again.  A disappointment and I chose not to finish it.

Published: 2020  Read: December 2021  Genre: History

Kitchens of the Great Midwest - J. Ryan Stradal

This was a different style of telling the story of a person's life; Eva, a young woman with a once in a lifetime palette, is revealed through her relationships throughout her life, from her father Lars in her childhood, through her adopted parents, her cousin Braque, her mother Cindy and others.  It's a bit disorienting as each chapter introduces another character and the transitions are abrupt.  The theme is food and its importance in linking people through life.  A quirky read.

Quotes and Notes

p 30 - He was already thinking about the good and the bad and the deep human necessity of it all, and how anybody ever got anything done without family and how someone could give that up in the amount of time it takes to seal an envelope with the same saliva once used to seal a marriage.

Recipes - for peanut butter bars and french onion soup

 Published:  2015  Read: December 2021  Genre: Fiction

Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez

 Sub-title: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

This is an important book to read to understand how the rise in the use of data has perpetuated bias toward women resulting in the loss of their potential contribution in a multitude of fields.  The author points out the well-reported lack of diversity in medical studies and goes on to address bias introduced via data to other areas of life as well.  She points out how the lack of consideration of women's needs and perspectives skews the  development of everything from phones to automated decision-making to healthcare.  

She points out in the Afterword that there are 3 themes that define women's relationship with the world:

1) the invisibility of the female body; forgetting to accommodate it in design in all fields

2) the visibility of the female body leading to male sexual violence against women and how it is measured and accounted for in design, resulting in limiting women's liberty.

3) Unpaid care work; pointing out that women are doing far and away more than our fair share of this work.  It naturalizes sex and gender discrimination to assume this is the female role.

Quotes and Notes

p 30 - Women do 75% of the world's unpaid care work and this affects their travel needs.  ..."trip-chaining', a travel pattern of several small interconnected trips that has been observed in women around the world."

p 118 - [regarding absorption of chemicals studies not taking into account] endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)  harmful even at very low concentrations and they are found in a wide range of plastics, cosmetics and cleaners.

p 157 - There is plenty of data showing that women have, on average, smaller hands than men and yet we continue to design equipment around the average male hand as if one-size-fit-men is the same as one-size-fits-all.

p 167 - [discussion of AI systems] used to screen resumes] Has the algorithm been trained to account for socialized gender differences in tone an facial expression?"

p 175 - [women entrepreneurs in tech world, example of pelvic floor trainer] In a field where women are at a disadvantage specifically because the are women (and therefore can't hope to fit a stereotypically male 'pattern'), data will be particularly crucial for female entrepreneurs.  And yet it's the female entrepreneurs who are less likely to have it, because they are more likely to be trying to make products for women.  For whom we lack data." 

p 180 - Across professional computing as a whole in the US, 26% of jobs are held by women compared to the 57% of jobs women hold across the entire US workforce - "sea of dudes" problem.

p 223 - Understanding Girls with ADHD states that women are underdiagnosed because of early clinical studies being done on hyperactive young white boys.

p 247 - ..."the best job-creation programme could simply be the introduction of universal childcare in every country in the world."

Published: 2019  Read: December 2021  Genre: Science

Anxious People - Fredrik Backman

I'd watched the movie of this author's first book, A Man Called Ove and remember enjoying it, even with sub-titles.  This second novel was recommended by one of my book clubs.  

I was intrigued, laughing out loud, and crying while reading this book.  A cast of quirky characters embroiled in a hostage situation created by a bumbling bank robber are interviewed by the police that rescue them and the story unravels from their shared experience.  And, it is like unraveling, loose, seemingly unrelated threads come together marvelously.  Backman is a master storyteller.  His characters are real genuine people.  This one is my favorite for 2022.  I imagined it as a play, which would be delicious!

Quotes:

"And that's the weirdest thing about being someone's parent...that you are loved in spite of everything that your are...Perhaps there's a biological reason for that, that up to a certain age a child loves you unconditionally and hopelessly for one single reason: you're theirs.  Which is a pretty smart move on biology's part, you have to give it that."

"Do you know how many men like you every single woman on the planet meets every day, who think that every thought that pops into your tiny little male brains is a lovely present you can give us?"

"We weren't allowed to argue just for the sake of winning.  Because sooner or later, that would end  up with one of us winning.  And no marriage can survive that.  Did it work??' Julia asked. 'I don't know," Estelle admitted. 'We never got past the first flush of infatuation."

"[My Dad] He says you end up marrying the one you don't understand.  Then you spend the rest of your life trying."

"...your children aren't your children, they're the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself." [Kahlil Gibran]

Published: 2020  Read: November 2021  Genre: Fiction