Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs ** 1/2

Moore's collection of short stories, Birds of America, made me a fan of her sardonic writing style. The first few chapters of A Gate at the Stairs shared that quality, and I enjoyed them. About 75 pages in, however, the book started to lose its way. The writing began to sound self-consciously literary, and the narrator showed too much insight for a twenty-year-old college student fresh from the farm. For example:

Contents may shift during the flight, we had been told. Would that be good or bad? And what about the discontents? Would they please shift, too? And what if oxygen deprivation in the cabin caused one to think in idle spirals and desperate verbal coils like this for the rest of one's life?

Ick. What happened to the clever, funny prose of the early pages? After a strong start, the book was a definite disappointment.

Michael Brooks, 13 Things that Don't Make Sense ** 1/2

This book describes 13 experimental results that scientists can't explain and that could therefore be the seeds for future Kuhnian paradigm shifts in science. As the epigraph from Isaac Asimov says, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!,' but 'That's funny...'".

It's a fascinating subject to me. I am a connoisseur of world views, and I'm intrigued by how world views change in the face of recalcitrant reality. Unfortunately, though, only a few of the chapters deal with persistent mysteries that pose real problems to our best theories. The others deal with results that can't be consistently repeated (cold fusion, life on Mars, signals from outer space) or with philosophical mysteries that don't challenge existing theories per se (free will, the meaning of death, the persistence of homeopathy).

The best chapters dealt with challenges to our theories of physics, because the anomalies are widely recognized and suggest that we might be missing (or misunderstanding) something fundamental. The final chapter, on homeopathy, was one of the weakest, but it did refer to some interesting research about the structure of water that I plan to follow up on.

For the record, the 13 things that don't make sense are:

1. The universe appears to contain only about 4 percent of the matter we'd expect it to based on our theories of physics.
2. The trajectory of the Pioneer spacecraft we launched in the 1970s suggests a force other than gravity is pulling on them.
3. The phase shifts in the light from distant stars suggest that some universal constants may actually vary in different parts of the universe.
4. Some experimenters have managed to create "cold fusion" reactions that appear to put out more energy than was put into them.
5. We don't know how to create life, or even define what the term means.
6. The Viking spacecraft initially found evidence of life on Mars, but was it valid evidence?
7. We once received a signal from an empty region of space that looked like one from an intelligent source.
8. A researcher in England discovered a giant virus that looks more like a bacteria.
9. We can't explain the evolutionary logic of death.
10. We can't explain the evolutionary logic of sex.
11. All scientific research suggests that we don't have free will. But we do, right?
12. We don't have a good explanation for the placebo effect.
13. Homeopathy is patently absurd, but it's still going strong after a few hundred years.

Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist ** 1/2

Nothing much happens in The Anthologist: a minor poet procrastinates instead of writing an introduction to an anthology of rhymed poetry. But nothing much happens in many of Nicholson Baker's books, and the lack of incident allows Baker to focus on the minutiae of everyday thinking. I love some of Baker's earlier examples in this genre, especially The Mezzanine. I think The Anthologist lacks the attention to detail of Baker's earlier work.

The book does exude a love of poetry and has a few interesting critical ideas in it. It made me want to read more poetry. Also, aptly for a book about poetry, the language is often beautiful.

Michael Sandel, Justice ****

Michael Sandel is a professor at Harvard, and Justice is based on his course in political philosophy. I think it's a great introduction to the subject. He identifies three main ways of defining justice — based on equality, freedom, or values — and illustrates the principles (and their complications) using contemporary examples such as the debate over same-sex marriage, government bailout of the banks, and immigration reform. Highly recommended.

I hope to write a more detailed summary of Sandel's arguments and my reaction to them soon and post it on our website, mike-n-evelyn.com.