David Wallace, Philosophy of Physics ***

Philosophy of Physics is part of Oxford University Press' Very Short Introduction series. It identifies the metaphysical mysteries that arise when we try to understand modern physics, from relativity to quantum mechanics. What is the nature of space and time? How do we interpret probability? What the hell is happening with quantum mechanics?

I like to ponder these mind-benders from time to time. The unintelligibility of the undeniably successful mathematics must mean that our conceptual understanding has gone wrong somewhere, right? But where?

Wallace does a decent job of demonstrating the seeming paradoxes. However, I find the enigmas compelling enough that I want a longer introduction.

Earl Swift, Chesapeake Requiem *****

Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate portrait of the small crab-fishing community of Tangier Island, located in Chesapeake Bay. Their way of life is vanishing both literally and figuratively: every year the Bay washes away more of the island, and every generation loses more of its people to the mainland. The journalist Earl Swift lived on the island for a year. He describes the history of the island, both natural and cultural, the lifestyle of the residents, and the social questions raised by its not-so-slow erosion. 

I enjoyed the book for its detailed anthropological depiction of the day-to-day life and work of the islanders, and for the mostly subtle way it approached larger issues. Swift sticks closely to the lived experience of the people on the island, rarely making explicit the abstract ethical and political principles involved. For example, he explains how the watermen understand the causes of land loss rather than emphasizing their disbelief in climate change and sea-level rise. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what the causes are, what matters is the most effective way to combat the problem. The specifics of Tangier's situation are unique, but similar forces are at work undermining traditional communities around the world.

Swift's year on the island was 2016 to 2017, which means he was on hand when islanders voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in his first election. Explicitly political discussions appear only in the final few chapters, but the sources of the residents' conservative views emerge clearly from their perspective on quotidian topics such as fishing licenses. 

The fundamental question at the heart of the story is how or whether to preserve the island and its community. How do we as a society decide what natural and social resources are worth saving? There are just over 400 people living on Tangier Island. Dropping enrollment at the school is as much a threat to their community as the shrinking land. Which is the more important reason to protect the island: the crab fishery or its position on the flyway for migrating birds?

Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey ***

The Extinction of Irena Rey is a comic novel about the relationship between an author and her translators, written by the acclaimed translator of Olga Tokarczuk's recent work. A group of translators gather at the author's house to work on her newest book. Their rivalries and differing approaches to translation lead to conflict and to the disappearance of the author.

I was not a fan of the absurdist humor in the first half of the book. There's nothing more painful than comedy you don't find funny. Croft's themes—the codependency of authors and translators, the relationship between human and ecological trauma, the appropriation at the heart of great art—come to the fore in the second half, making it far more engaging and thought-provoking than the first half.

Charan Ranganath, Why We Remember ****

I'll bet that Charan Ranganath is a great teacher (he is a professor at UC Davis). He has a talent for fitting scientific details into a clear big picture conceptual framework, while also tying it back to everyday experiences. He includes personal stories so that we feel like we know him; for example, the preface includes references to Hüsker Dü and fIREHOSE and many of the chapter/section titles are unattributed musical references.

The book is about the neural mechanisms of memory. Ranganath suggests that we should consider the purpose of memory.

Contrary to popular belief, the most important message to come from the science of memory is not that you can or even should remember more. The problem isn't your memory, it's that we have the wrong expectations for what memory is for in the first place. ... The mechanisms of memory were not cobbled together to help us remember the name of that guy we met at that thing.

When you think about why we remember, how we use memories to learn and make decisions, many vagaries of the mind start to make sense: the things we remember vs the things we forget, the malleability of our recollections, the "tip of the tongue" phenomena. Our goal should not be to remember more but to be more intentional about what we remember.

The chapters in "Part 3: The Implications" felt more vague and speculative than the rest of the book. Perhaps that is appropriate given their broader scope, but it means the end was anti-climactic.

Eric LaRocca, This Skin Was Once Mine ** 1/2

This Skin Was Once Mine is a short collection of four horror stories. The horror in each story derives from a character's mental derangement which turns out to be greater than it seems and/or falls prey to even greater derangement in another character character. 

The plots were fine but the stories disappointed me for three reasons:

• None of the characters think or act like normal human beings
• The metaphors for emotional trauma were obvious and not developed in any insightful way
• The prose was clichéd and repetitive

The title story did surprise me. It broadly telegraphs that the narrator's troubles come from misinterpreting why her parents forced her out of the house twenty years before, but her reaction to the truth is unexpected and interesting. Alas, LaRocca adds two more unnecessary plot twists.

Adam Shoalts, Where the Falcon Flies ***

Where the Falcon Flies is a travel adventure in which Shoalts travels by canoe and foot from his home in southern Ontario to the Torngat Mountains in Arctic Quebec. As the title suggests, this is the migration route for peregrine falcons.

For the first half of the book, Shoalts canoes in developed and populated areas, across Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and up the Saint Lawrence River past Quebec City. He stashes his canoe and hikes north to Labrador City, buys another canoe and navigates the maze of lakes and rivers in northern Canada. He stops in the Torngat Mountains to see the falcon nests, then arrives at the Arctic Ocean.

There's plenty of adventure along the way, but Shoalts neglects to develop any unifying theme to make the journey feel meaningful rather than just one thing after another. He rarely mentions falcons despite their role in motivating the trip, and offers three measly pages about their Arctic home. He tosses out the kind of miscellaneous historical facts you'd find in a guidebook (about battles in the War of 1812, for example, or iron mining) but moves on quickly. His descriptions of the natural environment are competent but uninspiring.

Weather conditions on his trip were uniformly miserable. He always seemed to be paddling against the wind, getting soaked with rain, or portaging amidst clouds of mosquitoes. The one bright spot was the repeated kindness of strangers.

Percival Everett, James ***

Let me start by admitting that I'm not a fan of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and recall very few of its plot points. I generally don't care for picaresque novels and didn't find the comic elements humorous.

James tells the same story from the point of view of the runaway slave Jim. The gimmick is that Jim is extremely well educated and merely plays the fool for the benefit of his white oppressors. The first few chapters show Jim teaching young black children "the correct incorrect grammar" for the "slave filter," and several plot developments involve white folks being confused when they hear a slave speak "proper" English.

It is not surprising that James focuses on language given that the vernacular is the most notable aspect of Twain's book and of Everett's earlier book Erasure (filmed as American Fiction). 

Everett leans too heavily on his themes. Not only can Jim read and write, he is inexplicably well educated. He has a dream in which he argues with Voltaire about natural versus civil liberties, and has visions of John Locke. When alone, the slaves have explicit conversations about their predicament. At the same time, Everett skims past the adventures, such as when Huck and Jim explore a house that comes floating down the river.

The story comes alive once it deviates from Huckleberry Finn. The ironic humor, the action, and the intensity all increase during the period when Huck and Jim are separated. When they are reunited, it is Jim who drives the action, not Huck. The final chapters are completely different in both incident and tone: Huckleberry Finn ends with controversial chapters that "devolve into little more than minstrel-show satire and broad comedy" (says Ernest Hemingway); James ends with violence and righteous anger.