I’ve always held that the Sun is out to get us. Oh, sure, it plays the role of life-giver, showering the Earth in energy and heat necessary for life. Yet too much time in the Sun leaves us open to cancer. And in a little under five billion years, the Sun, in its senescence, will expand to engulf our planet. Before that happens, however, its expansion will have already scorched the surface and rendered the Earth uninhabitable. So pack your bags now, people. We might have as little as a billion years left!

If that sounds crazy, well, fine. But I really enjoy science fiction that considers the concept of human survival into the far-far-future. For one thing, it’s optimistic, because it assumes that we survive this tumultuous age. And then it asks: what happens to humanity when the Earth can no longer support life? What happens to humanity when the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies collide? What happens to humanity when the very universe itself ends? These events are almost impossible to fathom from our limited, terrestrial perspective. They have no bearing on our present-day lives. Yet they are fascinating to consider.

Curt Stager doesn’t look quite so far ahead in Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth. However, the sentiment is similar. He discusses global warming and greenhouse gases from a longer-term perspective than the topics usually receive in most media. Stager isn’t interested in how warming trends will affect the Earth into the next century or even the next millennium; instead he goes several orders of magnitude beyond. Central to this discussion is his argument that we, this generation, this century, have the opportunity to influence the next 100,000 years, depending on how much of our fossil fuels we leave in reserve and how much we manage to curb our carbon emissions.

The Earth is warming. The scientific consensus is in. This consensus includes a determination that humans are the primary culprits of this warming, thanks to our newfound skills at digging up dead plant life and burning it in offering to the gods of power and propulsion. For the first time in the history of the Earth, a species has managed to alter the biosphere of our planet through deliberate action. That’s rather staggering. (Stager introduced me to the term Anthropocene, a proposed new geological era corresponding to humans affecting the environment on a global scale.)

Denial of global warming is, thankfully, shrinking—but there are still plenty who, while acknowledging the fact, practise cognitive dissonance in claiming that global warming is either (a) not that much of an issue or (b) not this generation’s problem. Those with economic interests in maintaining our dependence on oil, coal, and natural gas claim that switching to alternative fuels is impractical or even impossible. Those who favour such a switch claim we’re selling our descendants of the next century up the river.

Stager points out that few people on either side of this debate consider what will happen to humanity and Earth beyond a century or two hence. And he has a point. The carbon cycle is such that our carbon emissions don’t affect the warming and cooling trends for the planet just into the next century or two; these emissions will affect warming and cooling for the next hundred millennia. So it behoves us to consider our actions on such a timescale, as incomprehensible as that might seem at first. So with Deep Future Stager aims to present some of the possible consequences if we either tamp down our emissions to a "moderate" level or continue to burn through our reserves as aggressively as possible.

The book treats us to visions of the past and the future, as Stager examines evidence of the former’s warming and cooling trends to help prognosticate possibilities for the latter. Past temperatures are available to us through ice core and sediment core samples, while future temperatures are the realm of advanced computer models. Stager is careful to attach a caveat when discussing the results of models: climate modelling, though distinct from weather modelling, remains quite difficult to get right. In some cases the timing might be off even when we are confident of the actual consequences.

Perhaps one of the most interesting contentions of the book is that our descendants might intentionally burn any remaining fossil fuels to ward off the next ice age. For this reason, Stager argues, we might want to consider leaving some around. I find this idea fascinating because it perfectly describes the Anthropocene; as time goes on, we are increasingly going to need to make more conscious decisions about how to alter our biosphere. It also demonstrates another idea that recurs throughout the text: "warming" doesn’t necessarily equal "bad".

To be sure, the current warming is having and will continue to have adverse effects on society, industry, and infrastructure. Yet change is inevitable. Only a billion years ago, the idea that there would ever be this much oxygen in the atmosphere would have seemed absurd to any life on Earth capable of such considerations. But thanks to some enterprising early bacteria mastering the art of photosynthesis, we’re now a planet dominated by oxygen-breathers, with our anaerobic distant cousins squatting in oxygen-deprived hovels deep in the ocean, shaking their metaphorical fists at us. Thus, there is precedent for life on Earth altering the atmospheric makeup and very environment of the planet. And life will adapt, as it always does, and flourish—with or without humans present.

This is Stager’s assertion. Other reviews call Deep Future an optimistic book, and indeed, Stager seems pretty sanguine about humanity’s chances of survival millennia from now. He’s careful to qualify that as the survival of the species, and that’s an important distinction. It’s very easy to discuss how global warming will be socially disruptive in the next century or so. Naturally, it’s harder to predict how society will change in response to continued warming over the next millennium. But aside from a few catastrophic scenarios, Stager opines, it will be very difficult for all of humanity to go extinct, even if civilization as we know it collapses again.

In this respect I think Stager is being too quick to dismiss those possible catastrophes. True, he’s engaging in speculative science rather than speculative fiction. I’m not expecting him to consider grey goo or a Singularity as possible apocalyptic events. Yet our continued tinkering with genetics, the ease with which we spread disease, etc., presents a host of opportunities for us to hasten our extinction.

On balance, though, Stager’s probably right. Civilization might end, but humans will endure. So Deep Future is an attempt to provide a glimpse at what the Earth might be like for these survivors. Using the latest techniques in climate modelling, Stager attempts to demonstrate how two different scenarios for human-caused warming will change the face of the planet. It’s an impressive education in how we affect our environment and an important reminder of how much every aspect of life on Earth is inextricably bound together. From the carbon cycle to the water cycle, all these processes conspire—sometimes over geological time-scales—to produce the most amazing changes. When Stager talks about how the weight of the ice on Greenland will actually create new, massive fjords as the glaciers melt … that’s just a "whoa" moment. Geology is cool.

Stager’s dedication to being even-handed, neither alarmist nor reactionary, in his presentation will doubtlessly frustrate or even infuriate readers on either side of the issue. Those who accept the scientific consensus that human-caused warming is a pressing issue, myself included, might wish that Stager were not so sunny in his outlook. But that’s missing the point. There is plenty of literature talking about the present crisis we face, and it’s an important subject. But it’s not the only way to view the issue of global warming, and with Deep Future, Stager reminds us of that. It’s important that we don’t forget that warming itself is not the bad thing, carbon dioxide itself is not the bad thing; rather, it’s the intensive, runaway warming that we’ve caused that is the problem.

We’ve passed the point where we can just throw up our hands and claim that we don’t have an impact on the environment. There is no going back. The only thing to do now is to accept our stewardship of the planet Earth and try to determine how best we can influence the next 100,000 years, for our own species and all the others here on planet Earth.

During my time in England, I have consumed an extraordinary number of BBC documentaries (and the occasional drama) about Britain’s long, bloody, occasionally confused history. Some of these covered the Plantagenets, but the lion’s share tend to drift decidedly towards the Tudors. Even the brutal episodes of internecine family bloodshed of the Wars of the Roses have nothing on slow-motion car crash that is Henry VIII’s six wives, Reformation, and Elizabethan England. In The Marriage Game, Alison Weir focuses on the politics involved in Elizabeth I’s marriage (or lack thereof) and how this influenced her relationship with Robert Dudley, the man most historians have labelled her lover in all of the various ways.

Marriage now can still, occasionally, be the bond that cements alliances in the vast dynastic power struggles between great houses. But not so much as it was in Elizabeth’s time. And Weir gives us a very good idea of the significance that Elizabeth’s marriage would have for England and for the rest of Europe. In a time where a Protestant England was a new and threatening prospect for Europe, Elizabeth’s marriage was about more than controlling or ruling England. It had direct bearing on the issues of who wielded absolute power over religious matters in Europe in that age. The religion of Elizabeth’s suitors, as well as that of her rival Mary Queen of Scots, would play a large role in determining Elizabeth’s moves in this marriage game.

It’s Elizabeth who refers to the matter of her marriage as a game in an attempt to trivialize what is, for her, a terrifying prospect. Weir shows how Elizabeth has to walk a very careful line. Her Parliament and advisers are pressing her for a marriage, both because they doubt her ability, as a woman, to rule, and because it would strengthen England and provide allies against the enmity of France and Spain. Elizabeth, understandably, is worried about the effect of marriage on her sovereignty as a ruler—a fear compounded by what happens to Mary after her marriage to Darnley. But she recognizes the precarious position that England is in. Into this mix Weir adds the complicating factor of her own speculation about what befell Elizabeth when she was a teenager in the care of Thomas Seymour. The Marriage Game paints Elizabeth as every bit the complicated person she should be, even if it’s not quite the likeable character we’d like her to be.

Elizabeth kind of comes across as a horrible and manipulative person. Her vacillation with regards to marrying Dudley is very annoying. Whenever she decides to renege on what was a fervent pledge to marry him, she buys him off with a title or land or a castle. (And it works, because in the end he’s more concerned with his worldly advancement than with actually being married to Elizabeth—but he still wants to get in her pants at the earliest opportunity.) As Elizabeth gets older and her marriage prospects diminish, the harsh and vindictive parts of her personality only seem to heighten. I don’t agree with those reviewers who assert that these unlikeable aspects of Elizabeth’s personality necessarily make her unsympathetic as a character. I can sympathize with Elizabeth’s dilemma and the emotions that motivate her to act in these ways, even if I don’t particularly like what she does as a result.

Certainly what Weir emphasizes above all else is the sense of loneliness that Elizabeth must have felt. She was a woman without peer. Her closest friends are some of her ladies in waiting who had been companions since her tumultuous years as a young adult during Edward and Mary’s brief reigns. But they don’t really understand the pressure she experiences as a woman monarch. Her most intimate confidante is Robert himself, and he isn’t exactly an impartial party. So it’s not a surprise that Elizabeth projects her uneasiness onto Mary Queen of Scots. Though Mary is a deadly rival, she is, like Elizabeth, a woman struggling to rule a kingdom with deep religious divides. It galls Elizabeth that Mary has no problem taking a husband and producing “an heir of her body,” despite the fact that Elizabeth’s failure to do so is ultimately a decision she made. Yet despite Mary’s clear involvement in plots against Elizabeth, Elizabeth is still horrified by the prospect of executing another country’s (deposed) monarch.

As a character study, The Marriage Game is an insightful look into this interpretation of Elizabeth. Yet at times Weir leans too much on character to drive the story. Her expertise as a non-fiction author shines through here. A novel, by definition, really needs a plot. I don’t remember The Captive Queen being as dull as the events here. Told in yearly chapters, the story here feels episodic but repetitive, with the same scenes being repeated over the years as Elizabeth’s advisers tell her to marry and she throws a strop (thanks, England, for the vocabulary). It is definitely interesting, but only to a point.

The Marriage Game retells and reexamines Elizabeth I’s reign through the lens of her marriage negotiations. Weir does an excellent job demonstrating how important this single part of Elizabeth’s life was, both to her as a person and to her realm. She interrogates the motivations behind Elizabeth’s reluctance to marry and Robert Dudley’s desire for her hand. As a story, it feels very flat—there’s plenty of drama, but it’s of the one-note variety. As a history, however, it’s interesting and enlightening. I won’t call it the best or most memorable piece of historical fiction I’ve read, but I certainly enjoyed Weir’s perspective and speculation on England’s Virgin Queen.

This is the second map book I’ve read recently, the other being A History of the World in Twelve Maps. These two books are similar enough that I could spend the entire review comparing them, but I’d rather not do that. So let me make the comparison now and then move on: On the Map is neither as detailled nor, for me at least, as satisfying as A History of the World in Twelve Maps (or H12M, as I’ll call it from now on). Simon Garfield covers very similar territory less thoroughly. I’ll give him some points for style, but otherwise, H12M is the far surperior choice for people interested in history, maps, or the history of maps.

Where the two books diverge is probably in their audience: On the Map is ostensibly more about maps, with history as a backdrop to the story of cartography; H12M is more about history told through maps. So there’s that. But this is not good for On the Map, because I found that H12M often exceeded it in terms of the detail it goes into about the development and creation of maps.

I was thinking about how I read and remember non-fiction books while reading this. It has been over a year since I read H12M. I don’t remember much about it. My memory sucks. Why did I bother to read the book at all if I don’t remember anything that I learned from it? And if I’m not going to remember much from a book, why should I care if it is detailled or not?

Well, hopefully I did learn something from it, and it will bubble to the surface of my mind at the appropriate moment at a cocktail party where I can regurgitate it and look smarter than I am. And when that happens, it’s the details I recall. While reading about the Cassini project to map France or the acquisition of the Waldesemuller map in this book, I recalled Brotton’s discussions in H12M—I even went so far as to pull the book from my shelf and glance over those sections again.

So when I read non-fiction (and this is where I’ll stop comparing On the Map to H12M, I promise), I need little details that will get stuck in my brain like burrs. I’ll feel the itch but won’t necessarily know they are present until they resurface. Unfortunately, Garfield’s surface-treatment makes it harder for those burrs to form.

He’s at his best when discussing individuals, and particularly contemporary individuals he can interview himself. His journalist credentials are obviously on display when he discusses how he tracked down and met with an obscure person in the maps world. And those chapters are lovely. They don’t always stick to maps per se as the topic of discussion, but they show, as Garfield probably intends, the human element of mapmaking. Garfield successfully chronicles the way that mapmaking has mirrored the political and philosophical differences throughout history.

Some of my favourite chapters discuss how people relate to maps. Chapter 8 chronicles the rise of the atlas, and Chapter 16 talks about the evolution of guidebooks. Garfield goes beyond the nitty-gritty of how these maps were produced and talks more about the business and economics behind the mapmaking. I enjoyed reading about how the public seized upon maps as a new way of seeing their world (these days, who doesn’t check out their house on Google Street View?). And the idea that guidebooks revolutionized travel across a newly-industrialized Europe, especially for single women, was very interesting. It puts into perspective the literature of the time that I love to read.

In later chapters, Garfield goes on to address the rise of digital mapmaking. I wish he had done more with this: he pretty much just says, “it exists, and here’s how GPS works” but doesn’t go much deeper than that. He doesn’t talk too much about the surveillance implications of mapmaking. He doesn’t talk much about geocaching. He seems more interested in chronicling the rise of the various GPS and satnav firms, who bought whom, etc. For some people I’m sure this is very fascinating, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for, and it didn’t match the human element that Garfield elucidates in previous chapters.

On the Map is a very uneven book. At times it is sumptuous in its discussion of maps and mapmaking. At times it is disappointing in the directions that Garfield pursues—some of these are a matter of taste, some are a matter of style. It’s not my favourite map book, but I’d recommend it if all you want is a sporadic discussion of mapmaking.

I first heard about this book when Daniel Levitin appeared on a Spark episode to talk about organization. I recommend you follow the link and listen to the interview; his examples are pretty much straight from the book, so it should give you a good idea of whether or not to read this. I mentioned the book to my friend Rebecca, because it seemed like she would be interested in it. Lo and behold, she goes out and buys the book herself … and then turns around and lends it to me before she reads it, because she has other books to read first. I don’t know this happened, but somehow I managed to acquire excellent friends.

Anyway, The Organized Mind is not a GTD (Getting Things Done) book in that it doesn’t pretend to have one amazing system to turn you into a productivity powerhouse. Rather, Levitin aims to use cutting-edge neuroscience and cognitive psychology to give the reader some insight into how our brains organize information and use that to make decisions. As he points out several times, humans are unique among animals for our ability to plan for the future and visualize alternative scenarios. But another thing that makes us unique is our ability to hack our own brains.

That’s what Levitin is trying to teach us here. He’s showing us how to hack our brains.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the best (or worst, I guess, depending on your perspective) procrastinator: you can still be productive if you can find a system that works for you. And the best way to do that is to be aware of how your brain works, and to work with your brain rather than fighting it.

The first part of the The Organized Mind addresses the way our brain reacts to external information. Levitin identifies two complementary modes of attentional awareness: the default mode, or mind-wandering/daydreaming mode, and the central executive. The former is so named because it appears to be what our brains lapse into given the chance. It’s good for creativity, for chewing over tough problems “subconsciously” (in quotations because Levitin points out that consciousness is a more fluid notion than it used to be). The latter is what takes charge when we need to accomplish a specific task. It says, “Hey, we need to do this now!” If you’re following a recipe or, like me, writing a book review, your central executive is keeping you on task.

I like how Levitin’s careful explication of current neuroscience reinforces how we used to view the brain in such black-and-white, siloed terms. To some extent this remains the baseline in mainstream perceptions of the brain: you are a “left-brain” or “right-brain” individual; you are logical or you are linguistic. Eyeroll. Levitin points out that being detail-oriented and organized is not necessarily antithetical to creativity; some of the most successful creative people succeed because their organizational system gives them more time to be creative. Similarly, specific cognitive functions are not always localized; sometimes they are distributed among neural networks throughout the brain. This is particularly important when forming memories—the same memory might be triggered by a sight, sound, smell, or link to another memory or concept, because of how memories get formed by our networks. Levitin is very skilled at using computer metaphors for describing how the brain stores information without making the common mistake of likening the brain too much to a computer.

Of course, even with a better understanding of how our brain works, there are limits to how far we can push that lump of grey matter. Levitin is a big proponent of cognitive offloading as a way of dealing with information overload. Basically: if you write something down, your brain treats it as stored, and stops mulling it over so much. Want to stop worrying about how much you have to do? Jot down a to-do list. Consequently, in this model of cognition, external organization systems are not just productivity fetishes but potentially useful adaptations. The Organized Mind explores several such systems, from the random-access 3x5 index card system to flat files and computer storage. Levitin makes it clear that he’s not trying to advocate “One System to Rule Them All” but instead encourage the reader to find something that works for them.

I was surprised by how fascinating I found some of the history behind these systems. We take file folders for granted, but there was a time when they were being introduced and everyone was as excited about them as we are about the new iPhone. (Apparently Dewey premiered some of this technology at 1893 World’s Fair, which would be the equivalent of a modern day tech expo like CES.) There are some interesting anecdotes, such as the fact that the majority of people didn’t know the order of the alphabet in the eighteenth century. As a student of English literature I knew about the great variation in spelling, but it just didn’t occur to me that the order of the alphabet would be so unimportant. This just demonstrates how our current cultural values bias our view and assumptions of the past.

At times Levitin’s digressions get the best of him, and he wanders off into tangents that don’t seem as related to organization as I would have liked. His discussions of statistical decision-making reminds me a lot of How Not to Be Wrong, with a few of the examples almost verbatim. And he refers to the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky quite a bit, being a student of the latter, so there is some overlap with Thinking, Fast and Slow. For what it’s worth, Levitin’s writing is more enjoyable.

The Organized Mind also has much to say about education, a topic I’m just a little passionate about. Neuroscience seems to support constructivism—the theory of learning that promotes student-led inquiry and construction of knowledge, rather than merely receiving it from an expert. Levitin points out that doing something imprints skills on our brain in a way that merely reading about or hearing about something does not. There are a couple of times in my notes where I’ve just jotted down, “Flipped classroom!” (a term in which students learn by tackling problems set by the instructor, who acts as another resource or guide but doesn’t actually lecture or otherwise instruct). And the conclusion is basically an impassioned plea by Levitin to make sure we are teaching students what they need to know for now rather than what we thought they needed to know a decade or two ago. In the Internet age, students need to be critical thinkers and problem solvers. It’s not about what you know, it’s about what you know about how you can get the knowledge you need.

I can’t not recommend this book. It’s intelligent, insightful, and well-written. The barrier to entry is on the higher side; even after hiding away the four-fold tables primer in an appendix, Levitin leaves an awful lot of science and math vocabulary out on the lawn for the neighbours to see. (Is that … is that a correlation coefficient in your driveway? How gauche!) I say this not to frighten but to be upfront: this is not a beach read type of popular science book but a “frown and think” type. I still recommend it, but know what to expect and what frame of mind you’ll need to get the most out of it.

Oh, one last thing: this might seem like a thick book. However, if you are like me, the first thing you will do is flip to the back and see if there is an index and notes. There are, and they are over a hundred pages combined. This is a well-indexed, well-annotated science book, and that is even better. Sexy, even. Because I have a confession, ladies: I like big brains. I cannot lie. And you other brothers? You cannot deny that when a girl walks in with a big heavy bag and shoves a book full of learning in your face you get pumped … to spend a weekend reading about cognitive neuroscience.

Or is that just me?

“The year is 1871. You are French and you are about to fondle a kitten.” Douglas Coupland has a talent for opening lines that are both funny and contextual. Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent opens with a whimsical story about a Frenchman going to work for the engineering company that eventually contributes some “corporate DNA” to one of the largest telecommunications company on Earth. As the technical first sentence of this book (in its introduction) asserts, you probably haven’t heard of Alcatel-Lucent. I hadn’t. Yet they own Bell Labs and are reponsible for servicing and innovating massive swathes of that thing we call the Internet. (If you are reading these words, chances are you are using the Internet to do so, unless you’re a transhuman picking through the wreckage of a library of the post-apocalyptic future devoted to print archives of what was once called the World Wide Web.)

If you want to have a book written about the Internet’s physical presence and how this has changed us as a species, you really can’t do much better than Douglas Coupland. I know him best as a novelist, and one who writes about the current impact of technology on our lives. But he’s also a non-fiction writer. And a visual artist. And a designer. This versatility makes him particularly suited to a book like this, which is part interviews, part description, and part meditation on Alcatel-Lucent and the Internet they helped to build.

Before I talk about Coupland’s writing, let’s talk about the book itself. The Visual Editions version of Kitten Clone is gorgeous. This is one of those books where the physical object is itself a work of art. It’s 25x18.5 cm of high-quality, smooth paper. The photo with “Inside Alcatel-Lucent” written on it that you see in the cover image is a kind of tiny dustjacket (a dust-wrap?) that folds out from either side of the inside cover, so you can use it as a bookmark, or just set it aside entirely when reading.

Olivia Arthur’s photographs are a poignant companion to Coupland’s text. She is the photographer he has been waiting for his entire life: I would buy re-issues of his novels with her photographs accompanying the prose. The photos portray the complexity and detritus that accumulates in an organization as old and reborn as many times as Alcatel-Lucent. Seemingly disorganized forests of wire disappear into connectors on the wall. An unidentified employee crouches over something that looks like a microwave oven on a worktable. Someone standing in the Murray Hill anechoic chamber, which looks pretty sweet. Maybe my favourite photos are a pair, on recto and then the verso page respecitvely, of an older man in front of a chalkboard covered in equations. Essentially, what makes Arthur’s photography so powerful is how it reminds us of the inherent physical complexity of the Internet. We easily get used to the ephemeral and omnipresent nature of our net connection, and the smooth intangible qualities of software and apps; sometimes we forget the hundreds of thousands of kilometres of marine fibre-optic and all the infrastructure on land that actually makes the Internet work. And when we do remember, it’s tempting for us to imagine gleaming towers of ivory, gunmetal grey, and smooth black data centres full of racks of happy servers. Real life is much messier. Even more than Coupland’s prose, Arthur’s photographs attest to this.

As far as the book itself goes, I was actually hoping for a little more. Coupland visits a few different hubs of Alcatel-Lucent activity: Bell Labs in New Jersey; the headquarters in Paris, France; and offices and factories in China. He interviews some of the scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and businesspeople who are working to invent new technologies, improve existing ones, and make money off the Internet. Along the way he hammers out a couple of recurring points.

Firstly, and related to what I said above about Alcatel-Lucent, Coupland talks about how the people at “Alca-Loo”, as it is apparently called, have this perception of themselves as plumbers of the Internet. He feels they underestimate their importance or impact. At the very least, he feels we average people should be more aware of what Alca-Loo and companies like it do, and I would agree. Few people are aware of how fragile our global network actually is compared to how much we do with it. There is little doubt that we have come to depend on the Internet in an amazingly short time compared to other major inventions, such as printing, or even the steam engine. If all our Internet connections went down tomorrow, most of us might survive, but it wouldn’t be a pretty apocalypse….

The Internet has changed us as a species. I read Kitten Clone just prior to the start of Desert Bus for Hope 8, a livestreaming charity marathon. If you haven’t experienced Desert Bus, then you won’t understand—but you can check out its website, or maybe watch some archived footage, to see the incredible craziness and fun that these people have while raising money for children. The only analog equivalent would be a television donation drive done by telephone—but, as usual, the Internet has taken such an idea and transformed into a barely recognizable twenty-first century equivalent with cats, and GIFs, and an interactivity television and telephones couldn’t hope to provide.

The Internet has changed us as a species. This is Coupland’s second theme, and it might seem obvious, but it’s an idea that bears unpacking. His interviewees always stress that the demand for data, for bandwidth, for connectedness, came as a huge surprise to the engineers and designers of the Internet. The Web and related infrastructure took off in a way that the people who first built it couldn’t anticipate. That’s an interesting tidbit that isn’t immediately obvious even to people who acknowledge the Internet’s impact. Coupland mentions some of the tantalizing, cutting-edge science being done to advance the infrastructure of the Internet and computing.

So, finally, Coupland touches on the curious equilibrium that exists between pure research and the need to find applications for technology. He mentions how Bell Labs, back when it was owned by AT&T, operated as a government-sanctioned monopoly, because the rollout of a national telephone grid was “too valuable to be left to the free-market research and development system.”

Let me reiterate that for a moment, because I think it’s difficult for people my age, who are watching the net neutrality debates in American media, to understand the significance of the above. The US government, back in the day, protected AT&T from competition and funded pure research into telecommunications.

Nowadays the Republican party—who are, technically speaking, now “the government” are actively working to undermine any attempts to ensure that everyone in the country is connected to high-speed Internet.

What the hell happened, America?

There are many reasons to lament the rise of transnational corporations. Coupland mentions Alca-Loo’s patents often but doesn’t talk about the dark side of technology and software patents. Yet there is a palpable sense of relief in this book about the fact that, as a multinational headquartered in France, Alcatel-Lucent is somewhat cushioned from the craziness happening in American tech regulation right now. Both Coupland and Arthur manage to communicate the spontaneous miracle that is the Internet and how its incredibly rapid evolution is … well, fragile.

Coupland makes a few remarks I have to disagree with. As his introduction to meeting Bell Labs’ Chief Scientist, he says:

Yes, that’s right: Alice… a woman. Does that shock you? A woman in such a position of high authority? Just kidding. The tech world’s not like that. It’s all about brains and is pretty much entirely gender-blind; if you can cut the mustard, you’re in. [Emphasis mine.]

It’s nice to think that Coupland’s anecdotal Lady Scientist can obliterate sexism in tech, but as The Agenda recently discussed, it exists. The tech world is not gender-blind, and it’s wishful ignorance at best or outrightly disingenous at worst to suggest that it is.

Later, Coupland says that according to Shawn Brennan, a “customer support engineer” at the Kanata office:

… whether someone is kept on is based purely on their contribution, reinforcing my perception that the tech universe is as close to a pure capitalist intellectual meritocracy as our species has ever created.

Hahahahaha … I snorted when I read this passage, and I still can’t help but laugh derisively a little. I’m not even sure where to start dissecting the levels of wrongness here. The idea that the tech industry is a meritocracy is just another myth promoted by successful people within the industry who do not want to acknowledge the privilege and success that helped them. As with any other industry, women and people of colour face a larger barrier to success and funding. It’s dangerous to ignore this and promote myths like the meritocracy.

I’m disappointed that in an otherwise beautiful and meditative book Coupland falls back on his male privilege rather than more critically examining this aspect of the tech industry. Then again, Kitten Clone isn’t about the tech industry so much as it is specifically about Alcatel-Lucent, and maybe the expectation was that he would say nice things.

There are plenty of reasons for one to read or buy this book. As I’ve said a few times, it’s just really, really good looking. It is a perfect book for the coffee table, so even if you can’t read (how are you reading this?) you can still look at the photos and show it off to your friends. If, like me, you are interested in the workings of the Internet, this book has shares an inside look at aspects of a company that is heavily involved in the Internet. And it’s laced with Coupland’s characteristic bold yet heavy weirdness.

I enjoyed Kitten Clone, even if it didn’t deliver quite the jolt I was hoping for or the perspective I wanted to see. It’s descriptive rather than interrogative; it’s thoughtful but not necessarily full of fresh new insights. Above all else, it combines the visual and the verbal to help chronicle a point in time in the history of our species where we are changing our society at a global, rapid scale. And who knows where that will lead us?

At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to write a very deep review of Simon’s Cat vs The World. After all, what can one say about something that is, ultimately, an all-ages picture book? I thought, I’m going to review this just because I know I’m already going to miss my reading goal for this year, but damned if I’m not going to use a picture book to get me that much closer. Then I realized Ben the Literature Snob was rearing his ugly head once again: how dare I be so biased? This isn’t a picture book. It’s a satirical graphic novella about the relationship between an owner and his very independent, very spirited feline! It deserves serious review and critique!

Let’s do this.

Simon’s Cat vs The World opens with the usual shenanigans: Simon’s cat tries to get at birds, climbs too high on a stack of boxes, tears a hole in Simon’s tent, etc. We have the usual reluctance to go for walks, go to the vet, or basically do anything we want the cat to do. As the story progresses, the cat manifests multiple schemes against other anthropomorphized animals—dogs and doves, hedgehogs and rabbits and mice. Sometimes these animals are allies, sometimes they are foes who lay their own traps for the cat, and sometimes they are neutral, disinterested parties. Truly, Tofield captures the ever-shifting nature of animal relationships. Left alone, they might be predators and prey—but in the face of human intervention, they can work together to achieve interesting results.

The adage that cats have nine lives springs to mind when reading this book, for Simon’s cat invariably gets into precarious positions that would diminish or even extinguish lesser pets. It just goes to show the incredible resilience of cats, and their propensity for prevailing even against a preponderance of odds. Ultimately, Tofield lends credence to those who theorize that cats are the superior life-form, that they are the masters and we, the pets.

With this in mind, then, it’s important to note that Simon’s cat is far from invincible. Though he often depicts his cat as outsmarting the various inventions that a human uses to curtail cat activities, Simon’s cat is equally as likely to be bested by objects, both animate and inanimate, or even simple hubris (perhaps the most dangerous cat vice). I think it would be accurate to describe Simon’s cat less as a hero and more as an antihero; rather than following the monomyth, the cat instead traces a loose arc from nuisance and menace to an endearing but mischievous friend. The cat is chaotic neutral at best.

Of course, it’s impossible to critique any graphical depiction of cat lifestyles without talking about the ur-example of the genre: Garfield. This comic strip cemented the stereotype of the lazy, entitled feline whose only motivators were a love for lasagna and a distaste for younger, more energetic cats. Garfield is a funny character, but the dominance of his comic strip on cat-lit for the past few decades means that it’s always refreshing to see authors who take this genre in a different direction. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Tofield subverts many of the tropes of cat-lit, but he definitely executes them in ways that belie the Garfield stereotype. While Simon often appears as frazzled as John might, he is clearly less pessimistic. It’s an open question whether this is because of, in spite of, or the reason for his cat’s energetic antics. Much like nature versus nurture, the complex feedback loop between cat and human will likely never be resolved.

As the book is more a series of single-page vignettes than a coherent plot, it’s difficult to review Simon’s Cat vs The World as a story. It’s more of a carousel of characterization. The art is lovely and the situations both diverse and highly risible. Children and adults alike will derive a good fifteen to thirty minutes of enjoyment from the initial reading of this book. And, as they continue to mull over the complex interplay of its subtext about the relationship between cats and humans, they will come to appreciate Tofield’s insights into the myriad ways in which cats manifest their intelligence and perspicacity in getting their own way. Any cat owner is bound to see their cat in Simon’s cat. As for those who aren’t cat lovers? Well … I guess you can always go read Tintin or something.

It’s been almost five weeks since I did this, so let’s hope my skills haven’t atrophied too much! My student teaching practicum was awesome, but it left me little time for reading and no time for reviewing. Now I need to catch up. So please forgive me if the details in this review are sparser than ordinary; there is a very good reason why I write reviews as soon as possible after finishing a book!

Fortunately, Triton is a very memorable book, which one might have expected coming from Samuel R. Delany. I love the edition I have, another Bantam 1976 yellowing reprint, similar to my edition of Dhalgren, that I picked up at a used bookstore for $1.05. The cover alone makes me feel much more connected to the zeitgeist in which Delany was immersed when he wrote this, and that’s crucial to an understanding of this book. If you allow me to get reader-response on you for a moment, Triton is a book that will affect you differently depending on your generation. I know I say this a lot—you can call it a recurring theme of my reviews, if you like—but it’s true in this case. Politics runs through Triton like its lifeblood. Sexual politics, gender politics, even military politics all play a role. The characters themselves are more like puppets in an intricate stage play of the human psyche, in which they are battling for the one, best way to express themselves to the outside world. Hence the generational meanings—someone raised in the 1960s is going to interpret the politics and Delany’s themes differently than I do in 2011. However, that doesn’t depreciate the book’s relevance.

Triton is the story of Bron Helstrom’s struggle to redefine his identity in order to make his life less miserable. After running into a travelling actor known as the Spike and sparking up a brief affair, Bron’s own checkered and conflicted views on sexuality take front and centre. Bron was once a prostitute on Mars, where, unlike Earth, male prostitution is legal. He had sex with both men and women for business. Now he lives on Triton, where people live in communes or co-ops that are often divided by sex or sexuality. He has chosen to live in an all-male commune. His next-door neighbour is a homosexual man whom Bron views alternatively with respect and derision, for Lawrence refuses the rejuvenation treatments that keep most people healthy and youthful. Bron is much less comfortable with homosexuality, with unconventional gender performance in general, now that this is no longer his profession.

Bron is also selfish. He wants and wants and will often do things to get what he wants that he only perceives as harmful in hindsight—mildly sociopathic would be a good term, perhaps. This proves, ultimately, to be detrimental to his relationship with the Spike, a fact that becomes apparent when they run into each other while Bron is part of a political delegation to the antagonistic Earth. The Spike leaves Bron with a heartfelt, dictated letter that tells him in detail why she cannot like him, and this acts as the catalyst for the decision that offsets the last part of Triton from everything that comes before.

I would probably have to provide a play-by-play summary of the entire book to describe in detail the episodes that cause Bron to make his final decision. Suffice it to say, Triton is an intricate book. Delany really does manage to create this amazing microcosm of a possible future society, one where advances in technology make it practical to alter one’s sexual orientation and sexual and gender identities on fundamental biological and genetic levels. Many science-fiction authors create such societies in order to explore the implications of those technologies—and there is nothing wrong with that—but Delany elevates this exploration to another level, creating the technologies to explore the issues they uncover. These issues are already present, simmering beneath the surface of society and occasionally bursting forth. The technology of Triton makes them more accessible for discussion—and the quality of that discussion is what makes Triton so memorable.

The subtitle of this book is An Ambiguous Heterotopia, alluding to The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. I can see the similarities, and this does make a good companion read. Both books present competing governments whose politics are in flux, with individuals undergoing moments of intense personal crisis against the backdrop of this larger conflict. I admit to preferring The Dispossessed though, and that might entirely be due to the portrayals of Bron versus Shevek. Bron is a jerk. There. I said it!

I am even more intrigued, however, by the connection to Foucault’s ideas of a heterotopia as a type of privileged “other” space. I suppose Delany sets up Triton itself as a heterotopia separate from the warring planets of Earth and Mars. Triton is physically distant from the other two planets, and the inhabitants of Triton consider people from “worlds” laughably different. Our view of life on Earth and Mars is heavily biased, of course, but it seems like the moons are refuges from more authoritarian regimes on the worlds. For all its advantages, however, life on Triton is not without its hardships and its disadvantages—hence the ambiguity. Bron confronts this at the same time that he confronts his dissatisfaction with his own life.

I confess I didn’t see the ending coming, and it altered my opinion of the entire book. It creates this very distinct division between what came before and what comes after. I suppose the question, which Delany of necessity leaves unanswered, is whether Bron’s decision will actually have the desired effect. Will this dramatic alteration to his life and lifestyle change him for the better? I think it was very drastic (hence why I found it unexpected), but it also makes a kind of odd sense.

Like Dhalgren, Triton is another difficult book. I didn’t find it nearly so difficult as Dhalgren to read, but it raises difficult issues and stretches the mould of the conventional plot-driven narrative. I’m coming to see this as “typical Delany”, and while not every writer can get away with that kind of intense devotion to themes, he can. Because Delany doesn’t back down, and the result are books that are still relevant thirty-five years later. He raises questions about sex and sexuality, gender identity and performance. And while Triton is without question a science-fiction novel, Delany makes that seem unimportant compared to the story he’s telling through his characters. He makes offhand references to technology and science we don’t have, and sometimes it doesn’t always seem plausible—but it’S always to a purpose. Triton is a well-constructed, thoughtful, thought-provoking piece of literature.

John Irving is a master of the messed-up. A Prayer for Owen Meany is a careful, tightly-managed piece of stage magic wrapped up into a book. The eponymous character in this book has a distinctive, almost shrill pre-pubescent voice, even into adulthood. It’s impossible to convey that on the page, but Irving tries by rendering Owen’s dialogue in ALL CAPS—during Owen’s few speeches, these can run to paragraphs or a page. I don’t visualize things when I read (I can’t picture Owen’s creepy child proportions, no matter how hard I try), but I can imagine his voice. I imagine the voice of Linus from A Charlie Brown Christmas, slightly higher-pitched and perhaps louder.

Why is Owen’s voice different? There is a reason according to the plot. Thematically, however, Owen’s voice is the most striking signal of his otherness. Owen’s appearance can be described, but such descriptions are transitory—they come and go throughout the text, and it is easy to forget them (or, as in my case, fail to reify them properly). Voice, though … voice sticks. Even if one is not reading aloud, or being read to, one can imagine a voice as one reads silently. And those blatant capital letters scattered across the pages do a brilliant job reminding one that Owen Meany is Different. We don’t find out how different until the very last pages, when everything Irving has left simmering for six hundred pages finally comes to a sharp boil.

There’s a payoff to reading this book. From the beginning, the narrator—John Wheelwright—hints that there is an element of fate to the story. We know that Owen isn’t going to make it out of this alive, and gradually we learn that in the process he will also make himself a hero. What’s creepy is that Owen is aware of this, and as the story progresses, it becomes clearer that Owen is manipulating events to bring his vision of the future to come to pass. From his admission into the army to his practising of “the shot”, Owen devotes his entire life to preparing for his single, shining moment of sacrifice.

It takes a long time to get there. Irving doesn’t let us take any shortcuts. Instead, he provides a slow biography of Owen and John, with an emphasis on their eternal friendship despite Owen’s involvement in the death of John’s mother. Along the way, Irving lays the foundation for what comes at the end of the book. More than that, however, Irving is building a case for Owen’s type of faith. Owen belives—in God, in himself, in the future—and works tirelessly, shrewdly, uncompromisingly in support of that faith. He first scoffs at doubt, then confronts it, then embraces it and emerges from it with a stronger conviction.

I think, at its core, A Prayer for Owen Meany might be a ghost story. Ghosts make appearances in various, symbolic forms—the ghosts in Dan’s annual performance of A Christmas Carol, the voice of Owen Meany that haunts the secret corridor at 80 Front Street, just to name a few. Owen’s glimpse of the future it itself a kind of ghost, echoing into the past. When John finally meets his father, it’s like a ghost coming back from the dead—and to punish his father for revealing himself, John scares him with a fake ghost of his mother.

I’m tempted to single out John as the weak link in this book. As far as a character goes, he’s rather lacklustre. The older John of the Toronto, 1987 scenes is about as interesting as dishwater, and the younger John isn’t much better. I’m not sure this criticism is particularly apt, however; Irving does go out of his way to provide John with plenty of backstory and plot of his own, including the matter of his parentage, the death of his mother, and his own ambivalent feelings towards Vietnam and America. My dissatisfaction with John is more likely because Owen just overshadows him at every turn. But I suppose this book demands a first-person narrator; it needs that closeness and element of fallible human speculation that a limited omniscient narrator just can’t provide.

Another difficult aspect of the book would be its tendency to switch frequently—and without warning—among different times. It jumps from the main narrative to John in 1987 to moments in between with fearsome alacrity. One paragraph it’s 1964, then it’s 1967, and then we are back to 1964. This can be frustrating and bewildering at times, but it indicates the amount of planning and preparation Irving must have done to have everything coalesce in the proper manner. Instead of telling a completely linear tale, Irving somehow knows which moments need to be adjacent to strike the right mood and sense of character.

For all of those reasons above, I’m just gobsmacked by the literary quality of A Prayer for Owen Meany. As a reader and a writer, I just find the execution of this book impressive. Even if I hadn’t enjoyed the story (which I did), I would still have to rate this highly for the inordinate skill it displays. And, of course, my enjoyment is partly a result of that same skill’s ability to manipulate my emotions. There are parts of this book that made me gasp, made me groan, or made me cry.

Owen’s “gift” to Johnny late in the book was perhaps the most emotionally-heavy moment, for me, of the entire story. Irving foreshadows the hell out of the ending, so while it is tragic it wasn’t necessarily shocking. Owen’s “gift” shocked me (and while I have read this before, I had no recollection of that moment). It was a twist that Irving kept carefully concealed, but it made a lot of sense—and it’s so an idea that Owen Meany would conceive. But that’s not even why I’m so moved. It’s those last few paragraphs, when Owen tries to comfort John, to tell John he loves him and that everything will be OK … that, juxtaposed with what he does, is the epitome of pathos and tragedy. I had to stop reading, briefly, not because I was crying or upset but because I was just … floored … by the act and the emotions behind it.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is a complex but well-crafted novel. It has a slow-paced, meditative story that reflects the tension and conflicting emotions in the American zeitgeist during the Vietnam War. Irving touches on life and loss, fear and faith—all the good stuff you need for a truly deep, memorable experience. This is one of my favourite Irving novels and an amazing book in general. It is an impressive and intense performance disguised as a novel.

Mindy Kaling is absolutely right: men do take too long to put on their shoes. At least, I do, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Send help!

It’s safe to say I probably wouldn’t have read this book if my friend Rebecca had not literally put it in my hands. (As Goodreads friend Megan remarked recently, this is the one way to ensure I will actually read a book you recommend to me this century.) I see in retrospect that many of my Goodreads friends have read this, but even that might not have been enough. I’m vaguely aware of Mindy Kaling is, in that “I think she was a guest on The Colbert Report once?” kind of way, but I’ll address the elephant in the room, and if you feel like I’m less of a person and never want to read any of my reviews ever again, I’ll understand.

*deep breath*

I didn’t watch The Office.

And I don’t mean I made a point of not watching. It’s not that I was opposed on principle to the show. That, at least, would be defensible. No, I simply had no interest in The Office, and strangely, managed to avoid watching anything more than about half an episode. I had no idea that Kaling was a writer for or actor on The Office. Indeed, on a broader level, I’ve largely managed to avoid modern comedy—aside from dipping in and out of SNL here or there, I don’t watch stand-up or sitcoms.

So I feel like I lacked a crucial frame of reference when reading Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me?. Kaling alludes to recent social phenomena with which I have very little familiarity, even through the vicarious medium of TV. Aside from Monty Python, I barely recognize, let alone have watched, most of the shows she mentions as inspirations or topical in her formative years. Hence, my overall bemusement: I really enjoyed Kaling’s writing style, to the point where she makes me laugh out loud. But I couldn’t connect with a lot of the essays about the entertainment industry. Is this, I wonder, how other people feel about reading books about math and physics??

With this in mind, I can see how it is tempting to dismiss or marginalize Kaling’s book as just “yet another attempt at a funny semi-memoir.” The chapters where Kaling attempts to lampoon her childhood experiences fall flat, because she does it by way of winking at and nudging the reader, lazily relying on the comedian’s shorthand: “Childhood—parents sure are funny, eh? Look at my wacky haircut and lack of fashion!” I wish there were more substance to these stories, that Kaling had gone a bit deeper. When she does get real, as in the chapter where she talks about her “secret friend” from high school, Marcia, and how that friendship blossomed while her friends from middle school went their separate ways, then Kaling’s stories immediately become more interesting.

My favourite chapter, as I alluded to above, is the extremely short meditation on how long it takes men to put on their shoes. It sounds facetious, but it is a serious matter that affects millions of men every day, and I’m glad someone like Kaling is finally taking a stand. Yet my enjoyment of that chapter surprises me. It is the most stand-up–iest of all the chapters here in a book that is very much an attempt at literary stand-up comedy. And I hate stand-up comedy with the fiery passion of a thousand white-hot stars. But maybe I wouldn’t hate it quite so much if more of it were like Kaling’s writing.

Kaling manages to capture how difficult comedy is, not just as an industry but as a genre for creation. Comedians have it hard, because unlike the rest of us people who are just happy to consume the funny, they have to dissect it in their comedy labs. They have to put on sterile clean-suits and cut into their beloved sitcoms and stand-up routines and ask, “Why is this funny? How does this work? How can I riff on this?” You can spend a lot of time on this, crafting what you think is the best, funniest thing ever—only for it to fall completely flat. Sometimes the flop isn’t even your fault: it could be a matter of timing, of current events making your joke insensitive or unfunny; or maybe you’re just before the wrong audience. But when your comedy goes awry, there is nothing left. It’s not like tragedy, where if you fail or ham it up too much, then it’s funny—that is kind of the intention of comedy. “So bad it’s good” is inaccurate: if your comedy is “so bad it’s good,” then either it’s just bad but some people are laughing anyway because they feel sorry, or it’s good because you are clever enough to pull off a deconstructive, self-referential routine (and you are Monty Python).

I was fascinated by Kaling’s story of how she went from amateur funny person to professional comedy writer. She and her best friend from college wrote and starred in a play called Matt & Ben, inspired by the apparent inseparability of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. But when she ended up in LA, she ran up against the wall most would-be writers encounter in that city, until she caught her “break” and got the chance to show her funny to the world again.

She also deserves respect for the self-deprecating way she mocks her own gradual envelopment by Hollywood television culture. From moving to LA to her involvement in The Office, Kaling has worked her way from being “outside” onto the “inside.” She is now part of the shallow, celebrity-obsessed machine she used to mock and continues to mock, but she knows her position in that machine has changed. It’s always heartening when celebrities maintain that self-awareness.

This self-awareness stems from a related sense of humility that Kaling masks with facetious self-importance. Unlike, say, a white and male comedian, Kaling is very much aware of and willing to acknowledge the role that luck and timing played in providing opportunities for her talents to shine on a wider audience. Beneath the offhand comments and the flippant voice she puts on, Kaling makes it clear

This is why it would be a mistake to dismiss a thin, outwardly-light book like Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?. Just because it aims to be funny, or because it’s a memoir written by someone on the younger side of 50, doesn’t make it any less interesting, sympathetic, or true. I don’t share Kaling’s love of stand-up or all of her tastes in humour (but we do share that love of Monty Python). But I appreciate reading her perspective and hearing about her particular vector into comedy and celebrity. Above all else, I appreciate the question Kaling implicitly asks with her humour: why, as a society, is it so important for our social cohesion to tear people down so we can build ourselves up? Why have we made it so difficult to differentiate between critique and criticism and nastiness? It’s possible to love something and critique it, not like something without judging it harshly.

The title says it all. We walk a fine a line between “being ourselves” (whatever that means) and being the people it’s easiest to be to fit in and not make waves so we can slide through our lives unhassled. We all compromise. We all yearn to express ourselves. We all do each of these things; what differs only is the relative degrees to which we place value on each action. We worry about everyone hanging out without us—but how far can we countenance changing ourselves, just so people hang out with us? There is no single answer that works for everyone. This book is just Mindy Kaling’s personal journey trying to answer that question.