I received this book from Tiny Fox Press and NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Apocalypse How? is a messy trainwreck, and if that’s your style, you’ll probably enjoy it. For the rest of us … let’s just say that I kind of knew how I felt about this book less than 50 pages in, and maybe I should have stopped there. This is basically “Indiana Jones in space” but make Indiana a young woman named Dakota Adams and instead of being an erstwhile archaeology professor she’s a struggling archaeology streamer. Pile on a few more Hitchhiker’s, Doctor Who, and other cult references—I’m sure there’s plenty I missed—then add a frenetic, non-stop rush from one nonsensical set piece to the next, and you’ve got the formula for this book. Galen Surlak-Ramsey pays tribute to numerous cult classic and pop cultural properties of the past, and I’m sure it comes from a place of love. But the overall effect is a bit too cutesy, a bit too rompish, a bit too put on for my tastes.

Allusion is a tricky literary beast. Like most seasonings, a little bit goes a long way. The protagonist’s name, or another name here or there, might have been fine by themselves. But the constant little references makes it seem like the book is showing off. I don’t feel like an insider being rewarded for getting the in-jokes; I feel like I’m being forced to sit through 300 pages of the author showing us how clever he is for working them into the story. It distracts and detracts from the author’s own original ideas—and let’s be clear here: Apocalypse How? does have a cool plot to it.

Oh, right, yeah, sorry, you probably want one of my one-paragraph plot summaries! Here we go.

Dakota Adams is Space Indiana Jones. She gallivants around the galaxy for the glory, the gold, and the 6 people who watch her livestream. She has a furry partner (in the Wookie sense, not the lifestyle sense) named Tolby, and he keeps the ship running so Dakota can keep running from whatever nasty alien creature is chasing her at the time. Dakota’s dream is to find tech from the elusive, perhaps mythical Progenitors, who are exactly what they sound like. When she finally does, the story really gets started, because now an interstellar mob boss is after her, except she suddenly acquires the ability to hop through space-time at the expense of her memories. Soon we’re in a non-linear race to escape a multidimensional spacetime museum that is going to be/will have been/has been destroyed (ugh, time travel tenses).

As mentioned above, I have zero issues with the plot itself. I don’t mind authors leaning on the idea of nigh-omnipotent extinct advanced species who scatter their tech around the universe like candy. The idea that Dakota is on the run from a criminal with enterprise-level resources, and that she’s then in a race against time (literally) to escape before this museum gets destroyed? Makes total sense. I’m in. Let’s do it.

Alas, Surlak-Ramsey’s writing style just leaves me so unsatisfied. First, we almost never get a break. I really like the “scene and sequel” approach to storytelling, but what we get with Apocalypse How? is mostly scene and precious little sequel. The sequels we do find tend to be repetitive and circular (Dakota’s fragmentary memory and time travelling doesn’t help this). Instead, Dakota is typically barrelling from one crisis directly into the next. (I’d comment that this sounds like an Indiana Jones movie, but actually I’ve never watched one. I know, fie!) The consequence is my second complaint: there is so little character development here it’s like trying to watch paint dry if paint could jump through time.

Dakota starts the book as an overconfident, smartass adventure-seeker. She ends the book the same way. Once in a while there are moments where it looks like she’s reflecting and maybe growing and learning some humility. But nope. It bothers me when books’ protagonists start out as badasses without having demonstrated why they’ve earned it. Dakota keeps screwing up, time and again, and it’s really only the time travel power she has that lets her get out of numerous bad decisions. Ironically it might be Tolby, her sidekick, who experiences the most character development of anyone. The rest of the characters, from Pizmo to the Curator to Mister Cyber Squid, are literally one-dimensional stock and archetypes. Nothing wrong with those, of course. But if all your characters are paper-thin, the light source at the top of the literary skybox shines through way too easily, and suddenly it’s all just shadows on the cave wall, you dig? We briefly interact with Dakota’s brother, and she mentions her parents a couple of times, yet we never actually learn where they’re at or what her relationship with them is really like.

In other words, Apocalypse How? is a novel of brilliantly squandered opportunities. I think this is pretty common when authors try to be humorous at the expense of digging deeper. Douglas Adams, from whom Surlak-Ramsey borrows a surname and a lot of references, understood deeply that the absurd is a tool for holding back the despair that we get when we stare into the abyss, the emptiness on the edge of human consciousness. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series begins with the destruction of the Earth, and each book becomes progressively darker, despite its patina of humour, because Adams is ultimately writing about the cold, capricious nature of life. Every time Arthur Dent tries to do something proactive, the universe smacks him down; the most well-adjusted characters, like Zaphod or the character who might be God, are the ones who go with the flow and accept that life is inherently nonsensical.

Moving further afield, consider another favourite TV show of mine, Farscape. This is a show about a human stranded far, far from home without much hope of ever returning there, and he falls in with a group of fugitives. The show is unforgivably funny yet also incredibly sad and bittersweet as well—again, because the writers understand that the humour goes hand-in-hand with the darkness that it must stave off.

Despite its title and the intense, life-threatening situation in which Dakota finds herself, Apocalypse How? never stops mugging for the reader long enough to establish that essential contrast to make the humour work for me. There is a competent adventure story here, but I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it as much as I wanted. Your mileage might vary, but if you’ve been reading my reviews long enough to get a sense of my humour and what works/doesn’t work for me, you can judge whether you’ll be in my camp or not.

Somebody told me you had a boyfriend
Who looked like a girlfriend
That I had in February of last year

That’s not from (Re)cycler; that’s a Killers quotation. But it’s apt for the plot of this book: Jill, who for four days of the month is Jack, moves to New York. As she tries to get used to independence and figure out who she wants to be, shenangians ensue. Soon tensions run high as Jack and Jill make mistakes, push their boundaries, and generally screw up over and over. Because that’s what young adults do. Lauren McLaughlin once again delivers a smart gender-fluid comedy couched as a young adult novel.

I’m really torn here. On the one hand, I absolutely love the premise and story in (Re)cycler and think it’s almost certainly superior to Cycler. On the other hand, there are parts of this book that make it feel … incomplete. The way Tommy gets sidelined, and the lack of resolution at the end of the story, make the narrative problematic in a structural sense. And as far as character development goes, I loved the way Jack and Jill change, and I appreciate the glimpse into how their parents are dealing with the new status quo. I wish, however, that McLaughlin had dedicated more time to the deteroriation of Jill and Ramie’s relationship.

Welcome to New York. I had that Taylor Swift song stuck in my head for this entire novel, but that is beside the point. Or is it? Anyway, it has apparently been waiting for you. And Jill.

She and Ramie are hitting the Big Apple like nobody’s business, in that they have moved into the third floor of a sketchy house in the part of Brooklyn that’s just shy of being upscale but is where all the sons and daughters of the affluent hang out when they want to pretend they’re slumming it on daddy’s dime.

*catches breath*

Jill seems kind of aimless for most of the book, because she has no job and no educational obligations. She temps in between transforming into Jack, and on Ramie’s urging she also does some half-hearted boy-chasing. She tries to make a friend in Natalie, their downstairs neighbour, but really Jack capitalizes on that. In fact, it’s fair to say that Jack has a more prominent role in (Re)cycler. That’s not to minimize what Jill goes through, but after an entire book in which Jack is essentially regarded as an interloper, it’s cool to see him getting more of the stage.

The main theme crystallized by these plots is simply that life is much bigger than the small town of Winterhead. New York is probably the most extreme way to teach that to Jack and Jill and Ramie, but it works. McLaughlin constantly juxtaposes the metropolitan atmosphere of their new city with reminders of the small-town mindset they used to inhabit: Jill’s near-OTP obsession with Tommy, her parents’ attitudes and sartorial styles, and Ramie’s burgeoning ladycrush on Marguerite. Jill struggles with “putting herself out there” on the “market” for dating, if you will, and has all sorts of hang-ups about trying to “get rid of” her virginity. Meanwhile, Jack realizes that he sucks at making friends, because he literally had never left the house until very recently.

I love the different gender dynamics that McLaughlin portrays and questions here. Jack of all people gets to be the feminist one, pointing out to Ian Larson and his gang why the whole charting and girl-trading thing is, you know, horrible. The fact that Ian doesn’t really “get” why this is problematic at first just speaks to the way in which the patriarchy harms boys and men. It’s not that there’s something inherently pervy about boys—they are socialized, just as girls are socialized, to behave in certain ways. Ian feels the need to boast about and chronicle his sexual accomplishments to fit in with the guys.

Similarly, Jill isn’t sure how she wants to portray herself. On her own in New York Jill has trouble standing out, mostly because she is ambivalent about “cheating” on Tommy. When she finds a role model in Natalie—who seems so much more sophisticated than fey Ramie—Jill has to walk the imaginary line between “slut” and “vamp” through fashion and flirtation. Natalie’s “you are the commodity” speech is reminscient of Jill’s mother’s views.

Basically, (Re)cycler offers a rare dual glimpse into how young men and women both struggle to define themselves and explore their sexuality in a society hellbent on defining, pigeonholing, and policing their behaviours. To an extent I wish McLaughlin had taken things further. It’s difficult to do these topics justice in a book so brief.

Indeed, this is a great ride while it lasts, but it comes to an abrupt stop. I can appreciate not wanting to wrap up all the loose ends, but McLaughlin literally leaves most of the plots wide open and hanging (with no sign of a third book in sight). Will Jill and Ramie make up? Will Jack and Ramie make up? After being absent for the entire book, will Tommy do anything? I don’t know. I don’t have strong feelings about any of those questions—I like how McLaughlin has endangered Ramie’s relationships with both protagonists; sometimes friendships wither when transplanted to new environments. But the ending is so jarring I turned the page and literally wondered if my edition had a misprint that was missing a concluding chapter.

(Re)cycler continues the excellent storytelling and characterization that I loved in Cycler. Once again, McLaughlin depicts teenagers who are smart, inquisitive, but so often flawed, fallible, and wrong. I don’t know if I liked it less or more than the first book, and I don’t think it really matters. Both are clever young adult novels that deftly deal with issues of gender, sex, and relationships.

I backed this on Kickstarter, but of course, then it sat on my shelf for a bit. Recently Gwen Benaway has been a prominent voice against Toronto Public Library allowing Meghan Murphy to host a talk at one of their branches. In following that news, I decided this was a good time to get to Maiden, Mother, Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes.

I really wish I could gush about this book and say I loved it, because it’s so important to support trans voices and get more #ownvoices stories with trans rep out there. Alas, I did not love this book. It’s not bad, but the stories and the writing in it are largely not my style. Also, it could have used another copyediting pass. Some of the stories had typos and duplicated lines.

Benaway’s opening story, “Mountain God” and Kylie Ariel Bemis’ “Dreamborn” were probably my favourite stories in this collection. The former is a take on sword-and-sorcery style fiction but with a more romantic twist, and despite being a very short story, it features a lot of character development and worldbuilding. I’d read a whole novel set in that world. The latter is an interesting take on “the humans are the invading aliens” trope, highlighting the plight of Indigenous peoples by casting invading humans as the Other, and I appreciated the emotional arc of this story.

The other stories are, to Benaway’s credit as editor and curator of this collection, quite varied in style and substance. There are vampires, witches, healers, dwarves … there are transdimensional beings as well as transgender beings, and the level of imagination and creativity on display is high quality. The ways in which trans women are represented, voiced, depicted, are diverse. In these respects, this is a great collection, and I don’t want my lukewarm praise to dissuade you from this book should you think it’s more your speed. Short stories are hard sells for me at the best of time, short story collections from different authors even more so.

And so, dear reader of reviews, my journey into revisiting cheesy ’90s epic fantasy that I may or may not have read as a kid continues. Last year I dipped into The Far Kingdoms to keep myself company with a broken elbow. This year, with a pandemic stalking close, I decided it was time to return to that universe with The Warrior’s Tale. Allan Cole and Chris Burch place Rali Antero in the narrator hot seat.

Several years have passed since Amalric Antero returned from finding the Far Kingdoms. Orissa prospers, but it is also on the verge of war. Rali Antero leads her all-female Maranon Guard into battle against the Lycanthians alongside the regular Orissan army. What should have been simple cleanup—chase down and dispatch the last Archon of Lycanth—turns into a years’ long quest worthy of Homer’s Odyssey. Along the way, Rali will fight pirates, wizards, demons, and her own internal turmoil. Is she a warrior? A wizard? Something else?

Some praise for this book: for the 1990s, it’s progressive in terms of sexuality. Rali is openly lesbian, and there’s no hint of disapproval from the authors or titillation. Granted, she is still a lesbian written from the perspective of two dudes, so take this praise with the large shaker of table salt that accompanies it. But it really is nice that the hero of this book isn’t some burly white dude warrior, and it is very amusing that Burch and Cole reward Rali with the kind of scenes we might expect from such a protagonist: she gets the love-making, the praise for her prowess, and to butt heads with the less savoury leaders of the mercenaries and other groups she must align herself with. Yes, there’s a fair amount of, “It’s tough being a woman in a man’s world” to the book, and that might start to sound repetitive after a while. Also, the cringey sexytimes descriptions do not stop in this book just because Rali et al boink their own sex.

That’s what all the different battle sequences are for.

This is an adventure tale, and it lives up to that promise. Rali & Co. lurch from one scrape to the next, yet Burch and Cole remember to give us enough time to breathe between each chapter. Along the way, Rali develops as a character. At the beginning of the book, she perceives her responsibilities very narrowly: she is the commander of the Maranon Guard, and she is responsible for the lives and honour of her women. As the journey to find the Archon, and then to return to Orissa, continues, Rali realizes she has to widen her perspective. She must take into consideration the entire ramshackle fleet under her command, and she needs to use everything at her disposal—that includes magic, and also guile. Rali at the beginning is merely a soldier; by the end, she is truly a warrior.

The structure of the story might start to feel repetitive, but I consider it reassuring. As with the first book, there isn’t much here if you’re hoping for a fantasy novel that shakes up the status quo. There are glimpses of something greater—towards the end, Rali meditates on how power corrupts and how the Archon’s attempts to elude death mean he must constantly expand his appetite for power. These are themes and ideas better explored in other fantasy series. Similarly, some of the episodes in this story are a little predictable, like the whole debacle with the Sarzana. There is a methodical and therefore mediocre quality to the plotting here, and it’s nothing to write home about.

This series continues to be the kind of tonic I like in my ’90s fantasy revisit. It’s not going to surprise you, but it won’t disappoint either.

My reviews of the Anteros series:
← The Far Kingdoms

You’d think the pandemic would mean I have more time to read rather than less, right? But for some reason my reading speed has decreased rather than increased. I’m making more of a comeback, but it still took me a long time to read and review Non-Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities. That shouldn’t reflect on the quality of this book. Similarly, I’m going to explain later that I’m kind of over these massive anthologies on subjects like this, but that isn’t a problem with this book specifically. This is a great anthology if indeed you want an anthology of this kind.

If you had asked me why I requested this from NetGalley and Jessica Kingsley Publishers, I would have said at the time, “Because it’s everyone’s responsibility to learn more about the diversity of gender identity, but it’s especially the responsibility of us cisgender people.” Haha. Oops. Since then I’ve realized that transgender better fits me as a label, and I’ve transitioned … yet I still think this was a good and important read. In particular, I identify firmly with a binary label of trans woman. Therefore, while I can definitely identify with some of the experiences of the contributors to this book, I really don’t know what it’s like to be a non-binary person. So this book was helpful both in terms of educating me about that experience and also in terms of helping me explore my quickly evolving gender identity.

This book has a lengthy roster of contributors and chapters, so I can’t possibly review them all. The editors in their foreword claim they’ve tried to bring in voices from around the world but correctly identify an overall bias towards UK writers. I don’t see that as a negative, but it’s something to be aware of. The editors also warn the reader that they’ve tried not to be too prescriptive in the language and ideas that their contributors use to discuss their experiences, so we might encounter languages or ideas that we find uncomfortable. Honestly, I didn’t see much of that—maybe my reading wasn’t as thorough as it could have been? But it definitely didn’t make me grimace the way To My Trans Sisters did with regards to the inclusion of certain contributors.

Non-Binary Lives lives up to its subtitle: it definitely focuses stories about intersections of identity. I was most fascinated by the chapters where people discuss how being non-binary related to their religion. I’m an atheist, so I haven’t had to consider my transition within the scope of any organized religious beliefs. While I didn’t naively believe that religions are always closed to trans and gender-noncomforming people, I’m glad that this book helped me understand the complexity of this experience. Some religious communities are very progressive and open-minded; others are predictably less so. The struggles that some of these contributors relate, and the joys that they or other contributors eventually reaped, make this book worthwhile for trans and cis readers alike.

I struggled with this book for so long less because of the quality of book and more because of my own waning interest in massive anthologies of trans voices. I see the appeal, the logic behind wanting to boost more than one voice, especially from people who don’t have the desire or platform to publish an entire book of their own. Nevertheless, I think what this book helped me discover is that I’m burnt out on these soundbite-style explorations of identity. I crave meaty memoirs of trans experiences, even if that means I’ll be self-selecting for trans people who have the education and opportunity and desire to write such things. I need the deep dive rather than the survey of the field. For now.

The Math(s) Fix wants you to believe that computers are coming for your math.

Scary, isn’t it? You should find it scary. Computers are way better at calculating than we are, yet we insist that “real math” means learning how to do long division by hand!

Wolfram Media kindly provided me an eARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for this review. I was definitely very interested in this.

Some positionality, because even though this review is not about me, my perspective informed my reaction to the book. I am a math and English teacher. I have taught high school in the UK, and I currently teach high school to adult students in Ontario who need their diploma. I have 7 years of intimate experience with how the math curriculum and our wider system of educating and assessing students fails them. My current position allows me a lot of latitude that I wouldn’t necessarily have if I had to answer to parents, so I’ve had the enjoyment of doing things like going gradeless. A lot of what Wolfram suggests in The Math(s) Fix aligns with what I am already doing or planning to do in my classroom—however, as he points out, teachers alone cannot implement this fix. For this reason, I am a proponent of radical change to all levels of our education system.

But what if you’re not? What if you’re someone who doesn’t know much about our current education system? You’ve been out of school for years. Maybe you’re a parent, maybe not. Will this book convince you that Wolfram is right, that there is a problem and he has the right solution? I hope so. I really hope so.

Here’s what you need to know about this book.

First, it’s not a math book. It’s not an education book. It’s not a policy book. There are no advanced equations in here. You don’t need anything beyond your basic education to read this. Wolfram also doesn’t delve too deeply into theory of pedagogy here (he brushes up against it, at times, but nothing that’s too hard to follow). Similarly, Wolfram keeps the aim of the book general enough, in terms of policy changes, to apply to any jurisdiction and any scale—local, regional, national. If you’re wondering, “Does this book apply to me, to my children, to my school, to my board or authority?” the answer is “Yes.”

Second, this is a book about the necessity of unity mathematics as a school subject with computational thinking, but it is not about how we should replace educators with computers, and if that’s the reading you take away from this, go back and read it again. I’ll admit I was skeptical as all-get-out when I saw who had written this. Indubitably Conrad Wolfram is qualified to speak on this subject, but would The Math(s) Fix just be a thinly-veiled advertisement for Wolfram products in schools? It’s unavoidable that Wolfram’s companies would benefit from the shift he outlines here, and he acknowledges this. Yet the arguments he makes for the necessity of this shift are persuasive and have nothing to do with the Wolfram bottom line. Moreover, Wolfram recognizes—indeed, is intimately familiar with—the limitations of computer-based math. At one point he condemns people who interpret calls for CBM to mean “computer-based assessments.” He argues that computers can help with the organization and presentation of material, that computers can help with computation, but that at the end of the day, both qualitative and quantitative assessments are best left to human educators. This is true even for quantitative assessments, because it is hard to quantify problem-solving. Which brings me to …

Third, this book clearly defines what math is and is not—or rather, what math has become in schools versus what it should be. One of the first things I say to my new math class full of anxious adult learners traumatized by their years of failing to do math in high school? “This,” I hold up my phone calculator, “is not math.” I proceed to explain how math is not “doing calculations,” because we have computers for that. I explain to them that real math is about creatively solving problems. And then I try, in eight weeks, 110 hours, to somehow undo as much of the years and years of abuse they’ve endured at the hands of our industrialized education system.

Don’t get me wrong: Ontario probably has one of the best math curricula out there. Yet I still want to tear it up and start fresh, because I think our whole approach is fundamentally backwards and obsolete in the world of computation.

Wolfram is very passionate about this change. He explains why this is not something we teachers can tackle alone. We need politicians, parents, and basically everyone else on board too—after all, this affects everyone. The Math(s) Fix is impeccably organized in such a way to lead you through the problem, the solution, and counterarguments to those who think this is unnecessary or unworkable.

What’s missing from The Math(s) Fix is probably a patina of prosaic writing. Wolfram admits he has shortcomings in this area. The arguments are logical, and the rhetoric itself isn’t bad. Yet despite his frequent references to experiences with his daughter, not to mention his own days learning defunct subjects like Latin, Wolfram is not great with the emotional appeals. As a reader, I definitely value these elements of a manifesto. There are others who have made similar arguments in more accessible, emotionally-intelligent ways. And there will hopefully be more to come. Wolfram himself acknowledges that this book cannot be the beginning nor the end of this movement for a new “core computational subject,” as he calls it.

So here’s my evaluation and my recommendation: The Math(s) Fix should be read by anyone with a strong interest in education policy, reform, or decision-making at any level. If you are a school board trustee, an educator, a politician … this book is for you. If you are a member of the general public and you feel like you have the stamina to wade through a book that is not at all math-heavy but definitely logic-encumbered then I’d recommend this book to you as well. If you want a book that makes a plea based more on anecdotes or broader social data, then you won’t find that here (and that’s ok). The Math(s) Fix is an important, well-presented addition to what is one of the most crucial conversations of our age. We are either going to get ahead of the computational revolution or we are going to do our children a disservice.

Will you contribute to the fix?

Other good education reform reads: Hacking Assessment, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood, The Curiosity of School

Hook me up with more education reform reads in the comments!

My best friend Amanda recommended this to me a few years back, but if you don’t put a book in my hands when you recommend it, then good luck! Fortunately I was reminded of this book while looking for excerpts of travel writing to show to my Grade 11/12 English class last week. I was in the mood for some “adventure non-fiction” as one might call Into Thin Air. The library had an ebook available to borrow, so off I went!

If you aren’t familiar with this title yet, it’s the memoir of writer and climber Jon Krakauer. He joined a paid expedition to climb Mount Everest in April/May 1996. He was going to write an article about the commercialization of Everest for Outside magazine. But the staggering tragedy that occurred overshadowed that topic. Krakauer recounts the events and, through his interviews with others on the mountain at the time, attempts to reconstruct what happened elsewhere. In so doing, as he professes in his introduction, he hopes to make some sense out of a tragedy that clearly affected him deeply. For us as readers, especially those of us who are not mountain climbers, we can only begin to guess how such an event might shake and shape someone.

Krakauer is clearly a Writer with a capital W; his prose is purple enough I could wring it out to get some dye for clothing. He indulges his vocabulary and displays a proud penchant for metaphors. I can appreciate the craft, yet I also found this distracting at times. Sometimes I just want writers to say what they mean.

Still, I definitely enjoyed the work that he puts into describing everything about the experience. There is no way I’m ever getting anywhere near Everest, yet I would never deny a fascination with it that I suspect most of us feel, at least sometimes, about remote and unknowable parts of the world. I can understand what draws people to explore, ascend, and feel like they have “conquered” such peaks. Yet as this book demonstrates, that feeling is an illusion. Everest can and will kill you, and even approaching it is a chore I would not relish.

As Krakauer described the frankly horrific conditions prior to reaching Base Camp—at one point they’re staying somewhere so crowded that the latrines are overflowing, and his lungs become raw from the smoke. And he hadn’t even started climbing the mountain! I remember thinking to myself, as I lay outside on my deck, “This is why you don’t leave the deck, Kara. Outdoors is going to kill you.” I can barely muster up the enthusiasm for a casual outdoor hike along carefully-groomed trails, let alone climbing the world’s tallest mountain.

So it’s safe to say I can’t empathize with Krakauer’s desire to summit Everest, but I sympathize with his passion and drive and the proportional regret he must feel. Into Thin Air portrays many conflicts, from the obvious ones (person versus nature, person versus person, person versus self) to less obvious ones … there is a sense of Greek tragedy to this book. Krakauer and the other climbers’ hamartia is their prideful desire to be one of the elite who have climbed this mountain, and it’s that desire that ultimately gets many others killed. I appreciate that Krakauer does not absolve himself of responsibility or even make excuses for himself. He straight up says that his actions likely contributed to Andy Harris’ death. Into Thin Air is a sharp reminder that no matter your level of skill, no matter how prepared you are, no matter your good intentions, when disaster strikes at 29,000 feet … you are just as vulnerable to bad decisions and moments of confusion or weakness as everyone else.

It’s clear, too, that not everyone on the mountain had good intentions to begin with. Krakauer’s portrayal of a South African expedition led by Ian Woodall is particularly unflattering: they pretty much flatly refuse to do anything to help any of the other expeditions, even when it’s clear that Hall’s and Fischer’s expeditions are in huge trouble. In contrast, an IMAX team led by David Breashears offered up their oxygen supplies even though it jeopardized their own summit attempt. The stunning selfishness exhibited by some, and the corresponding selflessness of others, drives some of the book’s most intense and fascinating parts.

There’s so much to recommend here: the narration and description, the intensity of the actual events, and the perhaps bleak analysis of the human spirit. Krakauer is clearly shaken from this ordeal—he confesses he shouldn’t be writing the book so close to the timing of the events. Yet he turned out something that I nearly couldn’t put down, which is high praise for a non-fiction book.

My ebook edition is the updated version with an afterword that addresses some criticisms of Into Thin Air, particularly from Anatoli Boukreev his a ghostwriter. I enjoyed this additional material and the intertextual depth it provides to the meta-conversation around the book. It’s important to challenge and hold writers accountable for the accuracy of their portrayals, of course. I’m biased because all I’ve read is Krakauer’s work and his defense thereof; that being said, the quotations he includes from Boukreev’s book do not make me inclined to think that Boukreev and his ghostwriter were striving for anything other than self-aggrandizement.

Into Thin Air is an intense and enjoyable read, albeit one that contains more than its fair share of human tragedy. You’ll be drawn into the sense of adventure but sometimes overwhelmed by the crushing helplessness of Krakauer, Hall, and the others. Even though he foreshadows most of the outcomes, including Fischer’s death, it’s so brutal to actually hear these events described as if they are happening in real time. I found myself in denial, thinking, “No, there must be a different ending here. They are going to survive.”

But this is non-fiction, and whereas fiction can give us a happy ending if that’s the writer’s desire, non-fiction cannot change this story’s ending. Krakauer is careful not to wrap up his writing in a bow and claim he learned some huge lesson or celebrate the triumphs of human ingenuity. Into Thin Air is appropriately sobre and sombre in its portrayal of climbing Mount Everest. A remarkable accomplishment? Yes. But at a very steep price? Also yes.

Lives up to the hype.

Genocide is depressing. One of the few things more depressing than genocide, however, is apathy, like that exhibited by the world governments during the genocide of Rwanda.

Reading Dallaire's memoir, I was tempted to blame the U.S., France, the U.N., et al., for their lack of response to his constant prescient warnings about the situation. However, Dallaire's message is clear and correct. Rather than pointing fingers, we need to come together as an international community to prevent this from happening in the future and stop those genocides that are going on today.

As an individual, I feel powerless. How can I possibly help alleviate the suffering of other human beings halfway around the world? I could donate to charity, but after reading how the various NGOs and humanitarian organizations squander the relief bought by our money, I'm not convinced that donations are an effective and moral way to help. I can't go over there and volunteer my time--unfortunately, I'm not strong enough, emotionally or physically, to be competent at that.

But I can learn. I can watch. I can open my eyes and read books like Shake Hands with the Devil. I can tell other people about these books, help open their eyes. And maybe if enough of us pay attention, if enough of us speak out and get the government to do something, then we might be able to make a difference. Canada doesn't have a terrible record. We've had failures and successes at peacekeeping. I'm proud of my country, though. We just need to unite against the bureaucracy that threatens to steal away our humanity and reduce us to meaningless statistics and quantifiable variables.

Daillaire's book is commendable because even though it comes from an obviously biased source, it largely avoids obsessing over assigning blame. Instead, he chronicles what happened during tenure as Force Commander of UNAMIR. Thanks to him, future generations have a testimony as to what happened in Rwanda. Eyewitness accounts help make clear what government reports and newspaper articles cannot; they communicate the human experience one undergoes in these situations. They remind us that this isn't fiction, so it isn't a tragedy. It is truth, but it is injustice.

I read The Hobbit back in grade six, after reading [b:The Lord of the Rings|34|The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1)|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156043001s/34.jpg|3204327]. My first impression of Tolkien was simply how good he was at writing high fantasy and not making it sound pretentious. It helps that he was one of the fathers of the modern fantasy genre.