Lift Up Your Hearts!

The Upside of Stress:  Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It  by Kelly McGonigal (Avery, 2015)

For a book that has such an important message, and which my read-through has left bristling with sticky notes, this was surprisingly hard to finish.  It's equally hard to summarize for this review.  I'd hoped that McGonigal's TED talk would be an inspiring summary, so I wouldn't have to say, "read the book."  But the talk lacks the details and documentation of the book, and, since it came before the book, lacks several key elements.  So I'll say it:  "Read the book."

Now, I know that most of you won't, so here's a taste.

Despite everything you've heard, it's not stress that's killing you.  What's killing you is believing that stress is killing you.  If you see stress as a positive force, it does you no harm.  Like grasping the nettle.

Oh, great.  So not only is stress killing me, but it's all my fault because I can't make myself pretend it isn't killing me....

Relax.  It's not that bad.  Really.

As a health psychologist, Kelly McGonigal had made a career out of telling people how bad stress is for their health, and teaching them techniques to help reduce it.  But then she came across a study that indicated that by encouraging people to fear and avoid stress, wasn't helping them, but making their lives worse.  She might have ignored, or discredited the research, but instead threw herself into investigating this crazy idea, and came away convinced.

In 1998, thirty thousand adults in the United States were asked how much stress they had experienced in the past year.  They were also asked, Do you believe stress is harmful to your health?

Eight years later, the researchers scoured public records to find out who among the thirty thousand participants had died.  Let me deliver the bad news first.  High levels of stress increased the risk of dying by 43 percent.  But—and this is what got my attention—that increased risk applied only to people who also believed that stress was harming their health.  People who reported high levels of stress but who did not view their stress as harmful were not more likely to die.  In fact, they had the lowest risk of death of anyone in the study, even lower than those who reported experiencing very little stress.

The researchers concluded that it wasn't stress alone that was killing people.  It was the combination of stress and the belief that stress is harmful.  The researchers estimated that over the eight years they conducted their study, 182,000 Americans may have died prematurely because they believed that stress was harming their health.

... According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that would make "believing stress is bad for you" the fifteenth-leading cause of death in the United States, killing more people than skin cancer, HIV/AIDS, and homicide.

But there's good news:  very small changes can have a great effect on how we look at stress.  A brief lecture on the benefits of stress, ten minutes spent writing about what values we find important; such brief interventions have been shown again and again to have long-lasting effects.  This isn't a think-and-get-rich plan, nor a placebo effect, but more of a butterfly effect.

[T]o many, these results sound more like science fiction than science.  But mindset interventions are not miracles or magic.  They are best thought of as catalysts.  Changing your mindset puts into motion processes that perpetuate positive change over time.

A belief with this kind of power goes beyond a placebo effect.  This is a mindset effect.  Unlike a placebo, which tends to have a short-lived impact on a highly specific outcome, the consequences of a mindset snowball over time, increasing in influence and long-term impact.

I'm very bad at doing the "exercises at the end of the chapter" in any book, but even so, simply reading through this one has already made a difference in my life.  How much remains to be seen, but the butterfly has flapped its wings, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

And now for the quotes.  Extensive, yes, but I'm still leaving too much out.  If you can get the book from a library, as I did, it will be well worth your while; it's repetitive enough that you can skim and get the major points.  Is it worth $13 for the Kindle version?  I don't know; maybe it depends on how stressed you are....

Fear, stigma, self-criticism, shame—all of these are believed, by many health professionals, to be powerfully motivating messages that help people improve their well-being.  And yet, when put to the scientific test, these messages push people toward the very behaviors the health professionals hope to change.

The new science also shows that changing your mind about stress can make you healthier and happier.  How you think about stress affects everything from your cardiovascular health to your ability to find meaning in life.  The best way to manage stress isn’t to reduce or avoid it, but rather to rethink and even embrace it.

[H]ow you think about aging affects health and longevity not through some mystical power of positive thinking but by influencing your goals and choices.

[P]eople who endorse a stress-is-harmful mindset are more likely to say that they cope with stress by trying to avoid it.  For example, they are more likely to:

• Try to distract themselves from the cause of the stress instead of dealing with it.
• Focus on getting rid of their feelings of stress instead of taking steps to address its source.
• Turn to alcohol or other substances or addictions to escape the stress.
• Withdraw their energy and attention from whatever relationship, role, or goal is causing the stress.

In contrast, people who believe that stress can be helpful are more likely to say that they cope with stress proactively.  For example, they are more likely to:

• Accept the fact that the stressful event has occurred and is real.
• Plan a strategy for dealing with the source of stress.
• Seek information, help, or advice.
• Take steps to overcome, remove, or change the source of stress.
• Try to make the best of the situation by viewing it in a more positive way or by using it as an opportunity to grow.

I call this the stress paradox.  High levels of stress are associated with both distress and well-being.  Importantly, happy lives are not stress-free, nor does a stress-free life guarantee happiness.  Even though most people view stress as harmful, higher levels of stress seem to go along with things we want:  love, health, and satisfaction with our lives. … The best way to understand the stress paradox is to look at the relationship between stress and meaning.  It turns out that a meaningful life is also a stressful life.

[R]aising a child under eighteen significantly increases the chance that you will experience a great deal of stress every day—and that you will smile and laugh a lot each day.  Entrepreneurs who say that they experienced a great deal of stress yesterday are also more likely to say that they learned something interesting that day.  Rather than being a sign that something is wrong with your life, feeling stressed can be a barometer for how engaged you are in activities and relationships that are personally meaningful.

When you believe that stress is harmful, anything that feels a bit stressful can start to feel like an intrusion in your life.  Whether it’s waiting in line at the grocery store, rushing to meet a deadline at work, or planning a holiday dinner for your family, everyday experiences can start to seem like a threat to your health and happiness.  You may find yourself complaining about these experiences, as if your life has gone off course and there is some stress-free version of it out there waiting for you. Consider that in a 2014 survey by the Harvard School of Public Health, the most commonly named sources of everyday stress included juggling schedules, running errands, commuting, social media, and household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and repairs.  These are normal and expected parts of life, but we treat them as if they are unreasonable impositions, keeping our lives from how they should really be.

It was this mindset—not some objective measure of stressful events—that best predicted the risk of death among the mean in the Normative Aging Study over five decades.  Summing up the study as “stress kills” (which plenty of media reports did) doesn’t make sense. … The same experiences that give rise to daily stress can also be sources of uplift or meaning—but we must choose to view them that way.

A bunch of Stanford students agreed to keep journals over winter break. Some were asked to write about their most important values, and how the day’s activities related to those values.  Others were asked to write about the good things that happened to them. … [After the break,] the students who had written about their values were in better health and better spirits. Over break, they had experienced fewer illnesses and health problems.  Heading back to school, they were more confident about their abilities to handle stress. … Writing about values helped the students see the meaning in their lives.  Stressful experiences were no longer simply hassles to endure; they became an expression of the students’ values. … [S]mall things that might otherwise have seemed irritating became moments of meaning.

It turns out that writing about your values is one of the most effective psychological interventions ever studied.  In the short term, [it] makes people feel more powerful, in control, proud, and strong.  It also makes them feel more loving, connected, and empathetic toward others.  It increases pain tolerance, enhances self-control, and reduces unhelpful rumination after a stressful experience.

In the long term, writing about values has been shown to boost GPAs, reduce doctor visits, improve mental health, and help with everything from weight loss to quitting smoking and reducing problem drinking.  It helps people persevere in the face of discrimination and reduces self-handicapping.  In many cases, these benefits are a result of a onetime mindset intervention.  People who write about their values once, for ten minutes, show benefits months or even years later.

When you can’t control or get rid of stress, you can still choose how you respond [to] it.  Remembering your values can help transform stress from something that is happening against your will and outside your control to something that invites you to honor and deepen your priorities.

When stress is part of what makes something meaningful, shutting it out doesn’t get rid of the stress.  Instead, taking the time to fully process and make meaning from what is stressful can transform it from something that drains you into something that sustains you.

A few things stood out about people who thrived under stress.  First, they thought about stress differently.  They saw it as a normal aspect of life, and they didn’t believe that it was possible or even desirable to have an entirely comfortable, safe life.  Instead, they viewed stress as an opportunity to grow.  They were more likely to acknowledge their stress and less likely to view every struggle as a catastrophe headed toward a worst-case scenario.  They believed that difficult times require staying engaged with life rather than giving up or isolating oneself.  Finally, they also believed that no matter what the circumstances, they must continue making choices—ones that could change the situation or, if that wasn’t possible, that could change how the situation affected them.  People who held these attitudes were more likely to take action and to connect with others during stress.  They were less likely to turn hostile or self-defensive.  They were also more apt to take care of themselves, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  They built a reserve of strength that supported them in facing the challenges in their lives.

This is what it means to be good at stress. It’s not about being untouched by adversity or unruffled by difficulties.  It’s about allowing stress to awaken in you these core human strengths of courage, connection, and growth.  Whether you are looking at resilience in over-worked executives or war-torn communities, the same themes emerge.  People who are good at stress allow themselves to be changed by the experience of stress.  They maintain a basic sense of trust in themselves and a connection to something bigger than themselves.  They also find ways to make meaning out of suffering.  To be good at stress is not to avoid stress, but to play an active role in how stress transforms you.

Although most people believe that the best strategy under pressure is to relax … [often]  the opposite is true.  [W]elcoming stress can boost confidence and improve performance. ...

[The football team] described their pre-game stress as being “amped up” and “excited.” They even tried to increase their adrenaline, knowing it would help them perform.  But when [they] talked about the same adrenaline rush before exams, they used completely different language.  Then it was “nerves,” “anxiety,” and “choking under pressure.” ...

Even in situations where it seems obvious that calming down would help, being amped up can improve performance under pressure.  For example, middle school, high school, and college students who have greater increases in adrenaline during exams outperform their more chilled-out peers.  Green Berets, Rangers, and Marines who have the highest increases in the stress hormone cortisol while undergoing hostile interrogation are less likely to provide the enemy with useful information  And in a training exercise, federal law enforcement officers who showed the greatest increases in heart rate during a hostage negotiation were the least likely to accidentally shoot the hostage.

[A] tend-and-befriend response makes helping others a surprisingly effective way to transform stress.  For example, researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania were interested in finding a way to relieve time pressure at work.  you know the feeling:  There’s too much to do and not enough time to do it.  Time scarcity is not just a stressful feeling; it’s a state of mind that has been shown to lead to poor decisions and unhealthy choices.  In this study, the Wharton researchers tried out two different ways to relieve the feeling of not having enough time.  They gave some people an unexpected windfall of free time and asked them to spend it however they wished.  Others were asked to spend that time helping someone else.  Afterward, the researchers asked participants to rate both how much free time they had available right now and how scarce a resource time was for them in general.

Surprisingly, helping someone else decreased people’s feeling of time scarcity more than actually giving them extra time did. Those who had helped someone else reported afterward that they felt more capable, competent, and useful than people who had spent the time on themselves.  This, in turn, changed how they felt about what they had to accomplish and their ability to handle the pressure. …  Their newfound confidence also changed how they perceived something as objective as time; after helping someone else, time, as a resource, expanded. ... The Wharton researchers summarized their findings whith this advice:  “When individuals feel time constrained, they should become more generous with their time—despite their inclination to be less so.”

[P]eople who can find a benefit in their struggles show a healthier physical response to stress and a faster recovery. … [T]his research doesn’t suggest that the most helpful mindset is a Pollyannish [sic] insistence on turning everything bad into something good.  Rather, it’s the ability to notice the good as you cope with things that are difficult.  In fact, being able to see both the good and the bad is associated with better long-term outcomes than focusing purely on the upside.

Stress caused by the news, as opposed to stress caused by your life, is unique in its ability to trigger a sense of hopelessness.  Watching TV news after a natural disaster or terrorist attach has consistently been shown to increase the risk of developing depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.  One shocking study found that people who watched six or more hours of news about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress symptoms than people who were actually at the bombing and personally affected by it.  It’s not just traditional news programs that instill fear and hopelessness; stories of tragedy, trauma, and threats dominate many forms of media.  In fact, a 2014 study of U.S. adults found that the single best predictor of people’s fear and anxiety was how much time they spent watching TV talk shows.

We all tell stories, and the stories we choose to tell can create a culture of resilience.  How do you tell the stories of your family?  Your community?  Your company?  Your own life?  Consider how you might make room for stories that reflect the strength, courage, compassion, and resilience in yourself and in your community.

The Mind's Eye  by Oliver Sacks (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

Books like this are why I need goal #63 (Read 26 existing but as yet unread books from my bookshelves) on my 95 by 65 list:  I'm always finding reasons to get a new book out of the library.  In this case, I was to visit a friend, who, like me, has discovered that she is face-blind.  The Mind's Eye has a chapter on face-blindness, and I wanted to be more prepared for our discussion.

I had discovered my own face-blindness quite recently, while watching a 60 Minutes report.  You can see part 1 of that report here, and part 2 here.  The show also provided a test for face-blindness, which I failed spectacularly, though in reality the test is all but useless for people not well-versed in pop culture.  Nonetheless, seeing my own life experiences reflected in the report was more than enough to put a name to my own disability.

Were it not so awkward, perhaps one should say, "face-visually-impaired," because the ability to recognize faces actually lies more on a bell curve, with about ten percent of the population with significant impairment—about the same percentage as of those with dyslexia.

Dr. Sacks himself has severe prosopagnosia, the technical term for face-blindness, along with another trait that is often linked with it:  inability to recognize places.

The meeting of two people with prosopagnosia...can be very challenging.  A few years ago, I wrote to one of my colleagues to tell him that I admired his new book.  His assistant then phoned Kate [Sacks' assistant] to arrange a meeting, and they settled on a weekend dinner at a restaurant in my neighborhood.

"There may be a problem," Kate said.  "Dr. Sacks cannot recognize anyone."

"It's the same with Dr. W," his assistant replied.

"And another thing," Kate added.  "Dr. Sacks cannot find restaurants or other places; he gets lost very easily—he can't even recognize his own building sometimes."

"Yes, it's the same with Dr. W.," his assistant said.

Somehow, we did manage to meet and enjoyed dinner together.  But I still have no idea what Dr. W. looks like, and he probably would not recognize me, either.

In neither trait am I anywhere near as badly off as Dr. Sacks, but this probably explains why my husband quickly developed a mental map of the city of Basel, Switzerland our first time there, whereas it took me several visits and—what was most efficacious—the opportunity to explore on my own, retracing my steps, memorizing landmarks, and such, before I became comfortable in the city at all.

The remaining six chapters of The Mind's Eye cover other aspects of the mental component of our visual experience, based on Sacks' research, the lives of his patients, and surprisingly often, his own health problems.  The other subject that intrigued me the most was on stereo vision, which for people with normal eyesight also turns out to be more of a continuum than either/or.  This chapter confirmed for me what I had noticed a while back:  I can see stereoscopically with no problem, but I don't always do it.  I find it entertaining to take the time, while looking at a scene, to think about stereo vision, and watch the landscape come alive.  When I'm in a hurry, or thinking about something else—as I almost always am—I take in scenery as I gulp words from the page of a book:  some details may be lost.  My daughter reads more slowly, but creates a rich visualization of what she reads; I wonder if she is more aware of the three-dimensionality of the world?

Oliver Sacks has written many more books, most of which, I'm sure, are as interesting as this one.  But I have #63 to work on....

Yesterday I completed my 95 by 65 Goal #57:  Finish chronological Bible reading plan.  Ever since I read a review copy of The Chronological Guide to the Bible (five years ago), I've wanted to read the Bible through in the approximate order of the events.  There isn't complete agreement among scholars on the details of the order, but "approximate" is good enough for me.  I've made various stabs at the project over the years, and even put the information from the Guide onto a bookmark—actually a set of bookmarks—to help me jump from place to place in my Bible correctly.  It shouldn't have been that hard, but flipping back and forth and keeping track of where I was and where I was going next was just enough of a pain that my efforts kept petering out.  Pitiful, I know, but the point of this post is not to talk about my failures, but my success at last.

What turned the tide was the YouVersion Bible app on my phone.  They have a gazillion reading plans, most of which are not interesting to me, but one of them is set up to lead the reader through the entire Bible, chronologically, in one year.  I owe a lot of thanks to our friend Christina S., who first introduced me to YouVersion, because I found this plan to be great!

The plan does all the work—except, of course, for the reading itself.  Every day they send a notification to your phone:  click on the notification and it takes you right to the plan.  Click on the next day's reading and boom, there you are, at the right place in the Bible of your choice (they have lots to choose from).  The end of one reading takes you directly to the next, until you've completed all the chapters for that day.  You get a nice little congratulatory note, then close the app.  Repeat every day for a year.  Or, if you fall behind at any point, there's a catch-up function that shifts the plan dates for you.  I took advantage of that once, in the beginning, but once I got the habit established, I found it easy to keep up.  Really, the app makes it simple—easy enough that even in especially busy times I managed to squeeze the reading in.  Because, as I said, it was right there, waiting for me.  The folks at YouVersion, though I doubt they've ever heard of Glenn Doman, remind me of his saying that one of the secrets of the success of his educational and therapeutic programs is, "we arrange for the child to win."  The YouVersion app arranged for me to win, and I did.

I loved the chronological path through the Bible, especially seeing how various events fit together, and reading one after the other the passages that are parallel but not identical.  I came through the process with a much stronger feeling of the integrity of the Bible as the record of real people living their lives in the context of real history and culture, and of God revealed:  gradually and progressively, though still imperfectly, through that record.  Perhaps the feeling was stronger because of the contrast I experienced while reading through the Qur'an at the same time.

The chronological plan was so enjoyable that I'm sure I'll do it again, but at the moment I feel it's better to mix things up a bit.  I'm sticking with the YouVersion app and their plans, however.  Today I started a 30-day reading of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), one that covers every word but weaves together the events from the different books.  As I said, I'm not interested in most of the YouVersion plans—many of them are "devotional," with more to read than just the Bible.  Scholarly commentary I would be interested in, but just some random person's thoughts?  Not so much.  Yet there are still some plans with straight Scripture to try out, and the chronological plan to return to.  I'm thrilled that the YouVersion people have arranged for this child to win.

The Penderwicks:  A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy; The Penderwicks on Gardam Street; The Penderwicks at Point Mouette; and The Penderwicks in Spring by Jeanne Birdsall (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2015)

Many thanks to our daughter, who knows what her mother likes, for recommending this series to me.  She called it a cross between Swallows and Amazons and The Saturdays, and that's a reasonable characterization.

Even as a child I preferred books written before my own time, and it's only gotten worse.  I've read some good, recent children's books, but many are downright awful and few if any measure up to those from the past that have survived the filter of history.  The Penderwicks series, I'm happy to say, is a wonderful exception.

My primary objection to modern books—my defnition of modern reaches back into the 1960's, at least—is that they want to be, well, modern.  Like many miserable church youth groups, they attempt to be relevant by embracing the worst of the world rather than providing hope and a better vision.

The Penderwick world is a modern one, and hardly free of modern troubles:  death, divorce, desertion, and depression all touch the lives of this family, as well as other troubles not beginning with "d."  But none of these overwhelms the story, being swallowed up by family strength and loyalty, loving and reliable parents who are in turn loved and depended upon, and siblings who appreciate and care for one another.  By hope and a vision of what family life can and should be.

Another thing I value in these books is that the children have serious interests—from writing to sports to music to science—that are appreciated and supported.  That's a rare trait, and one way in which they remind me of The Saturdays.

There are things in the books I personally don't care for, e.g. children in daycare, and too much romance for my taste—though the latter is handled well, I'll admit.  But overall, these are good books.  And fun, too.  Heather knew well the things that I would especially enjoy, such as certain book references, and the music teacher who enjoins, "you must choose a teacher who won't make you do that awful belting everyone is being taught these days."

Weathermakers to the World:  The Story of a Company.  The Standard of an Industry  by Eric B. Schultz (Carrier, 2012)

When my daughter's family gave this book to me last Christmas, my son-in-law included this explanation:  Because everyone should have a complete Eric Schultz collection.  Two years earlier they had given me King Philip's War, Eric's first book.  (Which I apparently have not yet reviewed, or that link would be mine, instead of Amazon's.)  Do you think I should tell them about his latest, Food Foolish?¹

I finished reading Weathermakers to the World last night, just in time to review it for today, the 113th anniversary of Willis Carrier's great invention²  (You can read several excerpts from the book by following that link.)  Air conditioning, it turns out, is about a lot more than helping one through a July heat wave—though it does that admirably, for which I'm grateful.

On July 17, 1902, a young research engineer initialed a set of mechanical drawings designed to solve a production problem at the Sackett & Wilhelms Lithography and Printing Company in Brooklyn, New York. ... This new design was different—so novel, in fact, that it would not only help to solve a problem that had long plagued printers, but would one day launch a company and create an entire industry essential to global productivity and personal comfort.

Weathermakers to the World was written for Carrier, the corporation, and doesn't pretend to be unbiased.  You won't find here the complaints of disgruntled employees, or any suggestion that Carrier's work is anything other than an unmitigated blessing.   What you will find is an advanced coffee table book crafted by a historian with a true love for his subject.  Actually, it's not so much a book as a portable museum exhibit.  If I occasionally wished for a higher word to picture ratio, well, I do that in museums, too.  But I love museums, and am usually as attracted to the design of the exhibit as to its content.

I grew up an air conditioning snob.  I lived in the northeast, and there A/C was for wimps.  Rich wimps.  The two weeks out of the year where it didn't cool down enough to make the day bearable?  They build character!  My thoughts on that subject are for another post, but I'll just say that what Florida didn't teach me about the value of climate control, Weathermakers to the World did.

Air conditioning wasn't invented to make people comfortable, but to control humidity in a printing plant, thereby greatly increasing quality and productivity.  That increase is the real story of Carrier and his invention.  (Or rather inventions, plural, because the history of the company is also a history of adaptation and improvement.)  I vaguely knew that air conditioning made possible the growth of the American South, but I had no idea what a difference climate control made to the economy everywhere.  How it changed everything from movie theaters to chocolate making to deep mining to precision manufacturing.  How during World War II large stores such as Macy's and Sears donated their air conditioning systems to companies producing necessary war materials, boosting both the quantity and the quality of their output, quite possibly shortening the length of the war.  That "clean" was at first as much a feature of air conditioned systems as "cool":  the first train cars to benefit from A/C were dining cars, and passengers were delighted not only by the comfort but that flecks of soot no longer decorated their food.  That Carrier's invention revolutionized museums, allowing them to conserve art and artifacts while keeping them accessible to the public.  That hospital patients would benefit almost as much from a more comfortable environment as from their treatment.

Even in hospitals, however, the personal benefits of air conditioning were surprisingly slow to come.  Three quarters of a century after Willis Carrier initialed those drawings, the hospital where I worked still lacked climate control in many of its wings.  The only reason we had the benefit of A/C—and that from inadequate and persnickety units—was that our computers would not work without it.  Carrier himself realized the comfort potential early on, but how slow businesses were to realize that people, as well as machines, are more productive under comfortable working conditions!  Not that I can fault them:  it took me a long time to shed my own A/C snobbery.

Finally, too, I understand why The Occasional CEO (the author's personal blog) occasionally complains about people who think innovation is coming up with a new iPhone app.  Willis Carrier was an inventor, an innovator, an entrepreneur who created a product useful in almost every human endeavor, and built a still-successful company and an entire industry around it.  Now that's the kind of innovation we need more of.  And lest our daughters, in their faithful and sometimes frustrating careers at home, miss the importance of their work in nurturing such innovation, here's what Willis Carrier had to say (thanks, Eric, for including this story):

"One day my mother started to question me regarding fractions, which we were then taking up and working according to rule.  She found that my idea of fractions was one number written over another, with a line between.  In other words, I had no perception of the concrete significance of the fraction; in fact, I have seen college men who didn't have it either.  She then proceeded at once, and with much skill, as I now realize, to demonstrate the principles of fractions with an apple, divided in various ways.  As a result, my whole idea of numbers was illuminated and fractions became a very interesting game or puzzle."

This lesson, Carrier would later say, was "the most important thing that ever happened to me."  It taught him that solving problems by rules and rote contributed little to genuine understanding. ... In later years, when asked how he had solved problems that had stumped so many others, Dr. Carrier was apt to smile and say, "I just reduce them to a pot of apples."

Reading Weathermakers to the World is like taking a leisurely walk through a museum of technology.  My kind of museum, that is:  one with an eye-catching design, and more words than push-buttons.  If you can't read the book yourself, you can see some good excerpts, as well as a short video, at WillisCarrier.com.

And I note that The Occasional CEO has published a post in honor of this day.  I forced myself to write this review before reading it, but you can find some additional interesting links there.

Tremendous Trifles  by G. K. Chesterton (Sheed and Ward, 1909)

This was a Christmas gift back in 2013.  (Thanks, DSTB!)  Despite my love of Chesterton's writings, it fell into the black hole that is my over-stuffed bookshelf, the bookshelf that takes up most of the back wall of my office, the bookshelf that inspired 95 by 65 goal #63, "Read 26 existing but as yet unread books from my bookshelves."  Thanks to that goal, Tremendous Trifles re-emerged.

This series of essays from the very early years of the 20th century were the result of Chesterton's brilliant mind looking in unusual, sometimes bizarre, ways at things and events that most people would ignore—if they noticed them at all.  The writings are somewhat dated, but I notice it primarily in missing out on some of the jokes; the ideas are still fresh, fascinating, and yes, sometimes bizarre.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this real, physical, odor-of-old-libraries book, but if you wish, you can read Tremendous Trifles for free, at Project Gutenberg.  (Most of Chesterton's works are now in the public domain.)  Here are a few quotations to whet your appetite.

[A]nyone else may do it better, if anyone else will only try.

Applied by Chesterton to his own writings, this statement is absurd:  his mind and his skills were incredible.  But still it speaks an important truth, that very often things could be done better, but those who are more able are not the ones making the effort.

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour.  It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black.  When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars.  And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour.  Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.  Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen.  Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.  In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.

If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.

Now, it is a terrible business to mark a man out for the vengeance of men. But it is a thing to which a man can grow accustomed, as he can to other terrible things; he can even grow accustomed to the sun. And the horrible thing about all legal officials, even the best, about all judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and policemen, is not that they are wicked (some of them are good), not that they are stupid (several of them are quite intelligent), it is simply that they have got used to it.

Strictly they do not see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is the usual man in the usual place. They do not see the awful court of judgment; they only see their own workshop. Therefore, the instinct of Christian civilisation has most wisely declared that into their judgments there shall upon every occasion be infused fresh blood and fresh thoughts from the streets. Men shall come in who can see the court and the crowd, and coarse faces of the policemen and the professional criminals, the wasted faces of the wastrels, the unreal faces of the gesticulating counsel, and see it all as one sees a new picture or a ballet hitherto unvisited.

Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

I find that there really are human beings who think fairy tales bad for children. ... [A] lady has written me an earnest letter saying that fairy tales ought not to be taught to children even if they are true. She says that it is cruel to tell children fairy tales, because it frightens them. You might just as well say that it is cruel to give girls sentimental novels because it makes them cry. All this kind of talk is based on that complete forgetting of what a child is like which has been the firm foundation of so many educational schemes. [emphasis mine] If you keep bogies and goblins away from children they would make them up for themselves. One small child in the dark can invent more hells than Swedenborg. One small child can imagine monsters too big and black to get into any picture, and give them names too unearthly and cacophonous to have occurred in the cries of any lunatic. ... The fear does not come from fairy tales; the fear comes from the universe of the soul.

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. ... Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies, that these strong enemies of man have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear....

At the four corners of a child's bed stand Perseus and Roland, Sigurd and St. George. If you withdraw the guard of heroes you are not making him rational; you are only leaving him to fight the devils alone.

There is only one reason why all grown-up people do not play with toys; and it is a fair reason. The reason is that playing with toys takes so very much more time and trouble than anything else. Playing as children mean playing is the most serious thing in the world; and as soon as we have small duties or small sorrows we have to abandon to some extent so enormous and ambitious a plan of life. We have enough strength for politics and commerce and art and philosophy; we have not enough strength for play. This is a truth which everyone will recognize who, as a child, has ever played with anything at all: anyone who has played with bricks, anyone who has played with dolls, anyone who has played with tin soldiers. My journalistic work, which earns money, is not pursued with such awful persistency as that work which earned nothing.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.  But these modern cowards are all crustaceans; their hardness is all on the cover and their softness is inside.

And finally, I present a story, one that makes up almost the entirety of one essay, aptly entitled "A Somewhat Improbable Story." It's as madcap as most of Chesterton's stories, and a serious essay as well.

You may suppose me, for the sake of argument, sitting at lunch in one of those quick-lunch restaurants in the City where men take their food so fast that it has none of the quality of food, and take their half-hour's vacation so fast that it has none of the qualities of leisure; to hurry through one's leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions. They all wore tall shiny hats as if they could not lose an instant even to hang them on a peg, and they all had one eye a little off, hypnotised by the huge eye of the clock. In short, they were the slaves of the modern bondage, you could hear their fetters clanking. Each was, in fact, bound by a chain; the heaviest chain ever tied to a man—it is called a watch-chain.

Now, among these there entered and sat down opposite to me a man who almost immediately opened an uninterrupted monologue. He was like all the other men in dress, yet he was startlingly opposite to them in all manner. He wore a high shiny hat and a long frock coat, but he wore them as such solemn things were meant to be worn; he wore the silk hat as if it were a mitre, and the frock coat as if it were the ephod of a high priest. He not only hung his hat up on the peg, but he seemed (such was his stateliness) almost to ask permission of the hat for doing so, and to apologise to the peg for making use of it. When he had sat down on a wooden chair with the air of one considering its feelings and given a sort of slight stoop or bow to the wooden table itself, as if it were an altar, I could not help some comment springing to my lips. For the man was a big, sanguine-faced, prosperous-looking man, and yet he treated everything with a care that almost amounted to nervousness.

For the sake of saying something to express my interest I said, "This furniture is fairly solid; but, of course, people do treat it much too carelessly."

As I looked up doubtfully my eye caught his, and was fixed as his was fixed in an apocalyptic stare. I had thought him ordinary as he entered, save for his strange, cautious manner; but if the other people had seen him then they would have screamed and emptied the room. They did not see him, and they went on making a clatter with their forks, and a murmur with their conversation. But the man's face was the face of a maniac.

"Did you mean anything particular by that remark?" he asked at last, and the blood crawled back slowly into his face.

"Nothing whatever," I answered. "One does not mean anything here; it spoils people's digestions."

He limped back and wiped his broad forehead with a big handkerchief; and yet there seemed to be a sort of regret in his relief.

"I thought perhaps," he said in a low voice, "that another of them had gone wrong."

"If you mean another digestion gone wrong," I said, "I never heard of one here that went right. This is the heart of the Empire, and the other organs are in an equally bad way."

"No, I mean another street gone wrong," and he said heavily and quietly, "but as I suppose that doesn't explain much to you, I think I shall have to tell you the story. I do so with all the less responsibility, because I know you won't believe it. For forty years of my life I invariably left my office, which is in Leadenhall Street, at half-past five in the afternoon, taking with me an umbrella in the right hand and a bag in the left hand. For forty years two months and four days I passed out of the side office door, walked down the street on the left-hand side, took the first turning to the left and the third to the right, from where I bought an evening paper, followed the road on the right-hand side round two obtuse angles, and came out just outside a Metropolitan station, where I took a train home. For forty years two months and four days I fulfilled this course by accumulated habit: it was not a long street that I traversed, and it took me about four and a half minutes to do it. After forty years two months and four days, on the fifth day I went out in the same manner, with my umbrella in the right hand and my bag in the left, and I began to notice that walking along the familiar street tired me somewhat more than usual; and when I turned it I was convinced that I had turned down the wrong one. For now the street shot up quite a steep slant, such as one only sees in the hilly parts of London, and in this part there were no hills at all. Yet it was not the wrong street; the name written on it was the same; the shuttered shops were the same; the lamp-posts and the whole look of the perspective was the same; only it was tilted upwards like a lid. Forgetting any trouble about breathlessness or fatigue I ran furiously forward, and reached the second of my accustomed turnings, which ought to bring me almost within sight of the station. And as I turned that corner I nearly fell on the pavement. For now the street went up straight in front of my face like a steep staircase or the side of a pyramid. There was not for miles round that place so much as a slope like that of Ludgate Hill. And this was a slope like that of the Matterhorn. The whole street had lifted itself like a single wave, and yet every speck and detail of it was the same, and I saw in the high distance, as at the top of an Alpine pass, picked out in pink letters the name over my paper shop.

"I ran on and on blindly now, passing all the shops and coming to a part of the road where there was a long grey row of private houses. I had, I know not why, an irrational feeling that I was a long iron bridge in empty space. An impulse seized me, and I pulled up the iron trap of a coal-hole. Looking down through it I saw empty space and the stairs.

"When I looked up again a man was standing in his front garden, having apparently come out of his house; he was leaning over the railings and gazing at me. We were all alone on that nightmare road; his face was in shadow; his dress was dark and ordinary; but when I saw him standing so perfectly still I knew somehow that he was not of this world. And the stars behind his head were larger and fiercer than ought to be endured by the eyes of men.

"'If you are a kind angel,' I said, 'or a wise devil, or have anything in common with mankind, tell me what is this street possessed of devils.'

"After a long silence he said, 'What do you say that it is?'

"'It is Bumpton Street, of course,' I snapped. 'It goes to Oldgate Station.'

"'Yes,' he admitted gravely; 'it goes there sometimes. Just now, however, it is going to heaven.'

"'To heaven?' I said. 'Why?'

"'It is going to heaven for justice,' he replied. 'You must have treated it badly. Remember always that there is one thing that cannot be endured by anybody or anything. That one unendurable thing is to be overworked and also neglected. For instance, you can overwork women—everybody does. But you can't neglect women—I defy you to. At the same time, you can neglect tramps and gypsies and all the apparent refuse of the State so long as you do not overwork it. But no beast of the field, no horse, no dog can endure long to be asked to do more than his work and yet have less than his honour. It is the same with streets. You have worked this street to death, and yet you have never remembered its existence. If you had a healthy democracy, even of pagans, they would have hung this street with garlands and given it the name of a god. Then it would have gone quietly. But at last the street has grown tired of your tireless insolence; and it is bucking and rearing its head to heaven. Have you never sat on a bucking horse?'

"I looked at the long grey street, and for a moment it seemed to me to be exactly like the long grey neck of a horse flung up to heaven. But in a moment my sanity returned, and I said, 'But this is all nonsense. Streets go to the place they have to go. A street must always go to its end.'

"'Why do you think so of a street?' he asked, standing very still.

"'Because I have always seen it do the same thing,' I replied, in reasonable anger. 'Day after day, year after year, it has always gone to Oldgate Station; day after...'

"I stopped, for he had flung up his head with the fury of the road in revolt.

"'And you?' he cried terribly. 'What do you think the road thinks of you? Does the road think you are alive? Are you alive? Day after day, year after year, you have gone to Oldgate Station....' Since then I have respected the things called inanimate."

And bowing slightly to the mustard-pot, the man in the restaurant withdrew.

 Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels  by Kenneth E. Bailey (IVP Academic, 2008)

I cannot remember where I learned about this book—though it seems like the kind of book Peter V. might have recommended—but its description intrigued me enough to put it in my Amazon cart.  The order arrived with other, more attractive books, however, so it went on a bookshelf instead of being read immediately.  And there it stayed for five years, almost to the day.

This year, however, the title popped up again, on my son-in-law's Amazon wish list.  What better way to work on 95 by 65 item #63 (Read 26 existing but as yet unread books from my bookshelves), than to read it myself, bring it to Switzerland with me, and give it to him for his approaching birthday.  It was a bit of a challenge to complete the 443 pages in time, even with a transatlantic flight, but I did complete it (though not this review) before making the return trip.

Was it worth the time?  Yes, even though most of the reading came at the cost of much-needed sleep, life with three (and then four) grandchildren under the age of five leaving few free moments for sustained attention to anything else.  The grandchildren, naturally, were more rewarding, but that's not the book's fault.

Was it all I had hoped for?  Not close, I'm afraid.  Don't get me wrong:  there's a lot of value there.  The book starts off with a splash of great promise in the author's argument, based on his knowledge of present and historical Middle Eastern culture, that Jesus was not born in a barn, or even a cave, behind an overflowing inn—despite each location having long tradition behind it—but in a private home, where the traditional guest quarters were already filled.  A baby born in the home's main room could have been conveniently laid in the mangers that served the livestock housed in the lower-level end of the room.

The author's cultural knowledge also brings new light to several New Testament stories, such as Zacchaeus' repentance speech:

The moment comes ... when Zacchaeus, who has been reclining with Jesus and the other guests, stands to give his formal response.  In traditional Middle Eastern style, he exaggerates in order to demonstrate his sincerity and pledges to give away 50 percent of his assets.  Then he says he will pay back fourfold anyone he has cheated.  If all the money he has ever collected unjustly from the community over the years amounts to 13 percent of his remaining assets, he cannot fulfill this pledge  No one expects him to do so....  In good village fashion...Zacchaeus affirms his sincerity by exaggeration.  If he does not exaggerate, the crowd will think he means the opposite.

Math may not be the author's strong point, but you get the idea.  And here's the backstory of the miraculous catch of fish in Luke 5:

The Sea of Galilee drops off into deep water close to the shore, and in most areas is too dangerous for swimming.  Casting can be done standing in the water or from a boat.  Drag fishing, with a long net and two boats, was also practiced....  These two types of fishing can be done during the day.  But all fishermen working Gennesaret know that most successful fishing takes place at night and primarily near the shore where fresh water feeds into the lake....  The very idea that a landlubber from the highlands of Nazareth, who has never wet a line, should presume to tell a seasoned fishing captain what to do is preposterous.  The fish can see and avoid the nets during the day, but they feed at night.  The order to launch into the deeps in broad daylight is ridiculous.

And of Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well in John 4:

He breaks the social taboo against talking to a woman, particularly in an uninhabited place with no witnesses.  Throughout forty years of life in the Middle East I have never crossed this social boundary line.  In village society, a strange man does not even make eye contact with a woman in a public place.

If the whole book were like this, I'd be sorry I promised to give it away.  But despite repeatedly, and correctly, pressing the point that our 21st century viewpoints distort what we see in these 1st century stories, it's clear that the author allows his own opinions to influence his interpretations.  He's also so very convinced that his interpretations are the correct ones, and too often speaks this assurance over what clearly are speculations.

While it's good to know how radically Jesus departed from the customs of his time in his interactions with women, I'm not convinced that promoting gender equality was Jesus' primary purpose in these encounters, though that seems to be the author's view.

Bailey's opinions intrude frequently, unnecessarily, and at times offensively.

History is replete with examples of one ethnic community displacing another.  To accomplish such a goal the aggressors usually feel the need to demean those they are brutalizing.  Words such as savages, vermin, and now terrorists ring down the centuries.

His apparent problem with labelling those who commit organized acts of terror as "terrorists" is gratuitously offensive.  The provocation distracts from his point while adding nothing to it.  So too with his bias against the modern state of Israel, which crops up now and then.

Although my next complaint is admittedly petty, it's like fingernails on a blackboard to me when Bailey uses outdated slang, such as "head trip,"  and overused phrases meant to sound Biblical which aren't, like "speaking truth to power."

For all that, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes is worth reading.  In addition to giving cultural insights, Bailey unlocks the rhetorical style and structure of many of the Biblical stories.  I'm not sure how much this actually adds to understanding, but it's interesting, and not at all obvious to the casual, English-speaking reader.

The ... challenge is to realize the historical nature of the Word of God.  The Bible for Christians is not just the Word of God.  Rather, it is the Word of God spoken through people in history.  Those people and that history cannot be ignored without missing the speaker or writer's intentions and creating our own substitutes for them.  Historical interpretation is the key to unlocking the vault that contains the gold of theological meaning....  It is helpful to note that this is true of all significant literature.

There were Sandra Boynton books around when our children were young, but they were new, and we mostly missed them.  When our nephews later introduced them to us, I wasn't all that impressed.  Very few books directed at children impress me.  But in the last month I have become a fan.

Specifically, of Blue Hat, Green Hat and But Not the Hippopotamus.  Daniel (22 months) wants them read over and over and over and over and over ... but I've yet to grow weary of them.  It helps that they're short, but it's mostly his enthusiasm that keeps me going.  He can very nearly read them to himself, thanks to the repetition within the books as well as the repeated readings.  He gleefully fills in "Oops!" and "Hippopotamus" in the appropriate places, and tonight, after I refused to read any more, I heard him "reading" several pages of the latter book to himself.  "Should stay?  Should go?" and with the greatest expression.  Such fun.

So, a very belated thank you, Ms. Boynton!

 The SHARP Solution:  A Brain-Based Approach for Optimal Performance  by Heidi Hanna (Wiley, 2013)

My brother knows my predilection for brain training, health, organizational, and similar self-improvement books; therefore he kindly lent me The SHARP Solution.  If I'm not as enthusiastic as I (and perhaps he) had hoped, it may be because I've read so many such books already.  As I found with Gretchen Rubin's Better than Before, prior familiarity with the material breeds contempt for foibles I'm otherwise inclined to overlook.

What are the annoying foibles in The SHARP Solution?  Number one for me is that the book tries to be scientific but keeps slipping into touchy-feely.  For example, the author repeatedly contrasts the brain and the heart, but while the brain is treated as a physical organ, its interconnected neurons subject to chemical influences and evolutionary biology, the heart is viewed as metaphorical, not the living, beating blood pump in our chests.  Second on the fingernails-on-the-blackboard list is the harping on meditation as a magic bullet for whatever ails us.  And while I do acknowledge the important of social interactions and support, Hanna clearly writes from an extrovert's perspective, which makes that section of the book less helpful to me.

That said, there are some good points, and I do have an assortment of quotations this time:

One of the key insights to come recently from cognitive science tells us that when we multitask, we tend to drop out of high-level rational decision-making, and slip into monkey-brain reactions in our various split activities.  [The oft-repeated term "monkey brain" is also high on my list of annoyances.]  Because we have so many things going on, we operate mostly on automatic pilot, rather than reflecting on our decisions and actions.  Multitasking often prompts us to make mindless decisions that may end up causing serious problems with important responsibilities or relationships.

Remember:  Your brain wants to conserve energy for possible threats during the day.  Therefore, it prefers to use automatic pilot mode as often as possible.  Habits save us a great amount of mental energy. ... [Habits] enable us to get much more done during the day than would be possible if we had to concentrate our full conscious attention on tasks like tying our shoes and brushing our teeth.  Habits are patterns of thought and behavior that we've performed so often and so successfully that they become programmed into our auto-minds and no longer require our full attention.

Of course, it may be unavoidable to encounter certain situations that require multitasking. ... A parent with more than one child certainly knows how important it is to be able to split focus.... [I would add that even one child can put a parent in that position.] We're often able to tone our multitasking muscles through practice, stress management, and a good self-care regimen....  "It doesn't mean you can't do several things at the same time," says Dr. Marcel Just, co-director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging.  "But we're kidding ourselves if we think we can do so without cost." Your attention comes at a cost:  your energy.

Whereas adrenaline prepares you for fight or flight, cortisol prepares you to hunker down and protect yourself  Instead of needing a quick spurt of energy, cortisol works to increase glucose in the bloodstream and store it away for future needs.  This is one of the reasons why stress has been linked to excess fat storage:  It not only stimulates a desire for comfort and distraction, but also pushes the brain into energy-storage mode.

If we are to train our brains to be more versatile, flexible, and resilient, we must ultimately be able to shift out of thinking and problem-solving mode and into reflective, insight mode.  Of course, this requires that we set aside time and mental space to practice our ability to do nothing at all.

I occasionally become too focused on my work, and so I look forward to massage in order to help me with my writing.  I often feel my stress levels growing when I strive to be creative, since I become increasingly stumped for new ideas.  However, when I concentrate on quieting my mind and relaxing my body, without judging myself or my thoughts, that's when I discover new solutions, fresh ideas, and a boost in my creativity.  I believe in this concept so much I even made it company policy that all members of our team get monthly massage (or other spa service) every month—my treat!  [Her typo, not mine.]

I always warn against preaching about healthy living.  Even though they are passionate about improving their loved ones' health and longevity, having someone lecture you about all the things you already know you should be doing but haven't been able to do in the past is not helpful.  In fact, the only thing it definitely will do is make them more stressed, and no doubt increase your stress levels at the same time.

One of the difficulties with changing behavior is that it often takes a lot of energy just to get started. ... One important strategy that will help make healthy choices a regular part of your life is to decrease what's called activation energy.  In physics, activation energy is the stimulus required to cause some sort of reaction; in human behavior, it's the energy we must expend in order to do something new.  In his book, The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor talks about his experience with activation energy when he was trying to practice guitar more frequently.  In his description of what he calls the 20-Second Rule, Achor put the guitar closer to the couch and moved the television remote further away—about 20 seconds away, to be exact.  "What I had done here, essentially, was put the desired behavior on the path of least resistance, so it actually took less energy for me to pick up and practice the guitar than to avoid it." He calls it the 20-Second Rule, "because lowering the barrier to change by just 20 seconds was all it took to help me form a new life habit."

 Pioneer Girl:  The Annotated Autobiography  by Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill (South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014)

As a young child I fell in love with Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods, and naturally ate up the rest of the series when I discovered it.  The earlier books (particularly Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy) remain my favorites, and having now read Pioneer Girl I better know why.  The first few books in the series are full of the delight of a child and a child's-eye view that paints pioneer days with glory:  the joy of good work, good food, open spaces, hope, family togetherness, and lots of "Inch by Inch" hippie naiveté.  As the story goes on, however, the children grow older, and adult worries and realities intrude.  Plus, I've never gotten over my childhood dislike of of romance stories, and if anything, coming-of-age stories are even worse.  I identify a lot with Peter Pan.

Pioneer Girl was Wilder's original, unpublished memoir, from which grew the Little House series, as well as many of daughter Rose Wilder Lane's writings.  It is full of the adult realities behind all the books.  As such, it is informative, even fascinating—but also a sharp reminder that it takes more than a rake, a hoe, and a piece of fertile ground to make a garden, or a life.  Don't get me wrong; this is no exposé, revealing the deep, dark secrets behind the children's books.  It's just that it made me realize that I'd rather keep my genealogy real and my children's stories warm-and-fuzzy.

There is a lot of genealogy in Pioneer Girl, as Hill has painstakingly identified the people that Wilder wrote of, even in passing.  Reading it reminds me of my work for Phoebe's Quilt, only a lot more extensive.  "Extensive" is the word for Hill's annotations.  Genealogy, comparing versions of the materials, analyzing writing style, researching historical realities, and explaining cultural references in minute detail; whatever it is, Hill's work is extensive.  Some of that I appreciated, and some I did not.  Although the book is clearly written for adults, Hill seems to assume that her readers are no more knowledgeable than the children who were the intended audience for the Little House series.  She explains common cultural knowledge in excruciating detail; had she been analyzing my first paragraph above, she would have provided publisher information for the books, provided the lyrics for the song, explained about hippies, defined the romance and coming-of-age genres, and told the story of Peter Pan, including its author, date of publication, and cultural significance.  I have to admit I prefer not to be considered completely ignorant, even if it means I have to look some things up.

Serious Little House devotees will find it worthwhile to read Pioneer Girl.  I found it encouraging to learn that while the books are deliberately fiction, and have taken liberties with some of the facts, most notably by leaving out significant events and rearranging the order of others, Little House is no mere "inspired by" work that bears little to no resemblance to the facts.  The stories ring true because they mostly are true.  But people's lives simply don't unfold the way a good story does, and Laura Ingalls Wilder chose to craft her tales of American pioneer life with all the skill of a novelist.

Better than Before:  Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives  by Gretchen Rubin (Crown Publishers, 2015)

This book started slowly for me, though not for bad reasons:  I spent too much time (and not enough) trying to answer some of the self-examination questions Rubin asks at the beginning.  It might be useful to revisit them when I'm feeling less time pressure (as if that day will ever come!).  I was somewhat frustrated because she keeps dividing the world into categories—Are you an Upholder, a Questioner, an Obliger, or a Rebel?  A Marathoner, Sprinter, or Procrastinator?  A Finisher or an Opener?—and all too often I find myself a true mélange, which leaves me unable to get as much from her later prescriptions as I otherwise might.  I bogged down again over her preoccupation with diet, and her low-carb proselytizing.  Finally, however, I realized that my less-than-enthusiastic reaction was primarily due to the fact that not a lot of what Rubin says was new to me.  Her Happiness Project books (my reviews are here and here) have many of the same characteristics I dislike, but they were so full of new and fascinating material that it didn't matter.  This time it did—or perhaps I just shouldn't have been in such a hurry to read it.  This was one of my "How Not to Read a Book" books, and I didn't have the time to festoon it with my usual sticky notes.  Hence, you get no quotations.

Be that as it may, there's still much of value, and I may re-read Better than Before at a later date.  For now I'll just mention the idea that struck me the most, and which I've already started to implement in daily life:  One of the greatest advantages to establishing habits is that it frees us from much decision making.  I'm one of those who feels as if I have only so much decision-making power each day, and anything that conserves that supply for more important decisions must be a useful tool.

Rubin's ideas about the usefulness of scheduling, accountability, monitoring, first steps, convenience/inconvenience, habit pairing, and the do's and don'ts of distraction and rewards are not new, but it's helpful to have them together in one book.  Better than Before is a good accessory to the Tiny Habits approach.

The Qur'an, English translation by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford University Press, 2004)

In the most important sense, a holy book cannot be subject to review.  It matters little whether or not I consider it holy; the fact that others do puts it in a different category of book.  For one thing, one must take greater care than normal to be respectful; that is merely good manners.  It also means that as a non-Muslim, I cannot adequately judge the Qur'an on the basis for which it was intended, that is, as spiritual guidance and inspiration for Muslims.  And yet, just as there is value in reading the Bible as literature, I believe the Qur'an may profitably be read in the same way.  Not to mention that it might be valuable to have at least some familiarity with a book that is so important to the two and a half billion or so Muslims around the world.

There is also the problem of reading a translation.  To Muslims, as I understand it, the Qur'an is a holy book in a much more literal sense than the Bible is to Christians.  That is, the book itself is holy, not just its contents.  What's more, it is the Qur'an in Arabic that really matters, in contrast to the Christian idea that the Bible speaks best to everyone in his native tongue.  While it is certainly instructive—essential for seminary students and scholars—to read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, that is not considered a necessary skill for most Christians.  For Muslims, however, you're not really reading or reciting the Qur'an unless it is in Arabic.  I'm of two minds about this.  On the one hand, it's a great unifying factor, as when Latin was essential in the Catholic church, when priests all over the world could understand each other, and the Mass was basically the same wherever you went.  But there's no doubt that true understanding is difficult (impossible?) in a foreign tongue.

The Qur'an itself makes the point repeatedly that it is an Arabic revelation—though I can't resist mentioning that the point being made at the time was that it was in a language the ordinary people understood.

I don't have anything to compare it with, but I will nonetheless give high marks to this particular translation.  It is not beautiful English, but it is easy to understand, and the translator has provided just the right amount of commentary, that is, enough to provide historical context and explain certain idioms and literary conventions, while not interrupting unduly the flow of the writing.

Despite all the above caveats, I'll share some of my observations, based on a single read-through:

• The chief effect of reading the Qur'an was to give me an increased appreciation for the Bible and the main tenets of the Christian faith.  Clearly, it won't have that effect on everyone, but I do highly commend the effort to Christians.  It would be more valuable, however, to have a good familiarity with the Bible and an understanding of the above-mentioned tenets first.
• As I read, I wished I had a better knowledge of what else was going on in the world, and especially in the Church, between the time of Christ and the time the Qur'an was written (early 7th century). 
• While the polytheists of Mecca, who were opposing Mohammed, were the chief target of the Qur'an's repeated admonitions not to "assign helpers to God," it's possible that the Qur'an anticipated by almost a millennium the Reformation's reaction to the Church's sometimes excessive adoration of Mary and the saints.
• The Qur'an makes much of several people it calls prophets; among the familiar are Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.  While the persons are clearly those noted in the Bible, many of the stories are different.  Moses' encounter with Pharaoh contains more details of dialogue, for example, and Pharaoh's wife turns out to be a righteous person, while Lot's wife's sins are greater than merely looking back in the direction of her former home.  Some of the stories, such as Abraham's tumultuous relationship with his father, parallel extra-Biblical Jewish stories.  The highly doubtful and extra-Biblical but ancient tale of the boy Jesus making birds of clay and then breathing life into them also makes an appearance.
• I knew that Islam calls Jesus a prophet, but I had not known that the Qur'an clearly states that his was a miraculous birth.  But instead of the Christian version, in which the Holy Spirit of God interacts somehow with Mary's human DNA, resulting in a being that is simultaneously divine and human, the Qur'an's story is that Jesus was created as Adam was, though within Mary's womb.  This view of Jesus, though not necessarily the same particulars, has been held by more than just Muslims:  the Arian Heresy some 300 years before Mohammed inspired the Nicene Creed and its assertion that Jesus was "begotten, not made."  Or, as C. S. Lewis put it, "What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God, just as what man creates is not man."
• Do you think Christians are obsessed with hell?  The Bible actually says very little about it.  The Qur'an, on the other hand, is filled from beginning to end with the horrors that "disbelievers" will face at the final judgement.  The images of fire are fitting for the hot desert country in which the Qur'an was written, but the idea of being forced to drink scalding liquid is a new one to me.

• In the Qur'an there is great emphasis on the Last Judgement and the life to come, e.g. "The life of this world is merely an amusement and a diversion; the true life is in the hereafter" (Sura 29, verse 64).  Again as befitting a desert culture, Paradise is pictured as a garden with flowing streams.  The descriptions are physical more than spiritual, involving comfort, good drinks (that don't leave you with a headache), lots of fruit to eat, young servants, and beautiful, modest women.  No mention of the infamous "72 virgins" that I could find, though.

• Not intending any disrespect to those for whom every word of the Qur'an is sacred, but I have to agree with the person who sighed that Mohammed could have used an editor.  C. S. Lewis said something similar about St. Paul—without any less respect for what Paul said—wondering why God, in giving Paul so many good gifts for the edification of the church, did not also give him the gift of clarity in his writing.  In the case of the Qur'an, however, I find clarity less of a problem than repetition.  The same things are said over and over and over again—in that sense it's worse than a Presbyterian sermon, and I do not say that lightly.  (It is my belief that preachers of the Presbyterian persuasion, along with others who call themselves Reformed with a capital R, could make their sermons much more effective by cutting them by about two thirds.  Obviously I'm not of the "tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em; tell 'em; then tell 'em what you told 'em" school.)
• Repetition is not the only thing the Qur'an has in common with the Calvinist branches of Christianity.  The Qur'an holds simultaneously the precepts (1) that God is merciful and eager to forgive—every Sura (chapter) but one begins, "In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy"—and (2) that God predestines each to his own fate, saving those he intends to save and damning those he does not.  And yet as disbelievers are cast into hell they will know and acknowledge that they have only themselves to blame.  Believers are told to harden their hearts against disbelievers even amongst their dearest family and friends, reminding me of the Calvinist preacher (extreme, but very popular) who announced that while he would readily die for his children, he would not quarrel with God should God not have predestined them for salvation.
• At the same time as I was reading the Qur'an, my chronological Bible reading program had me reading Old Testament history and prophets. The juxtaposition highlighted just how radical the New Testament message really is, how different from both what came before (Old Testament) and what came after (Qur'an):  God as the Judge whose focus is on punishing people for their sins vs. God as the Father whose focus is on saving people from their sins; vengeance on one's enemies vs. loving one's enemies; good deeds and right behavior as prerequisites for earning God's favor vs. good deeds and right behavior as responses to God's favor freely given to the undeserving; emphasis on God's distance and "otherness" vs. emphasis on God's nearness and complete identification with human beings.
• Another great difference between the Qur'an and the Bible I want to call "believeability," but that's only a poor attempt to express what I feel.  Obviously, people "believe" the Bible, the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, the New York Times, and a whole lot more.  But what I love about the Bible is that it reads like the collection of ancient documents that it is: history, poetry, prophecy, preaching ... I can feel the real lives of real people in their historical context from beginning to end.  The Qur'an, being a series of revelations, feels isolated and unanchored, even though this version does a good job of explaining the historical context of many otherwise confusing verses.  I imagine that if the Bible were nothing but the Book of Revelation, I'd feel the same way about it.
• It's tempting to say that the Qur'an also lacks the beautiful language of the Bible, especially the King James Version, but that would be knocking down a straw man.  Even the best Bible translation cannot capture the Hebrew poetical forms, for example, and since I'm not fluent in Arabic, whatever beauty is in the language of the Qur'an is completely lost on me.
• Just as much in the Bible is open to different interpretations, so in the Qur'an.  I can see where the burqa came from, and equally how others interpret the same passage quite differently.
• I found it interesting to discover that I was somewhat shy of reading the Qur'an in public, obscuring the cover when leaving it in a parked car, and wondering if it was the wisest choice of reading material to take with me on an airplane.  Was I afraid of radical Muslims or of radical anti-Muslims?  Both, I think.  On the airplane I was mostly worried about scaring other passengers.  In any case, it made me more aware of the stresses ordinary Muslims must feel as they travel.
• Interesting fact:  The first printed version of the Qur'an (Latin translation) was made in Basel, Switzerland, and included a preface by Martin Luther.

I can't say that reading the Qur'an was a particularly enjoyable exercise—actually, it was at first, before I tired of the repetition—but it was profitable.  The book has earned its place on my reference shelf.  To all those who would like to gain some familiarity with the book that is so important to so many people, I commend this translation.  Unless you are already fluent in Arabic.

I appreciate that I can place books on hold at our library, knowing that they will be set aside for me as soon as they become available.  But I do wonder about the timing sometimes.  A while back, I had placed holds on Gretchen Rubin's Better than Before, and on Pioneer Girl, the annotated autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Several people were ahead of me on the waiting list for each of them, so I was not expecting to read them anytime soon, though with one I was much closer to the top than the other.  Wouldn't you know, both books suddenly became available at the same time—right before we left for several days out of town.  I had to check them out, or lose my place in line, even though neither was suitable for taking with me on the trip.

We returned a week before the books were due.  The normal lending period is three weeks, but for popular books it is reduced to two—with no possibility of renewal.  Thanks to some other tasks taking top priority after our return, it wasn't until the weekend that I got very far into Better than Before.  And Pioneer Girl?  It has 400 pages.  Wilder's actual text is in larger print, but the bulk of the book is Pamela Smith Hill's copious, detailed—yea, exhaustive—small-print footnotes.  I read it in under 24 hours.

That's not how to read a book.  It's like trying to quench your thirst while standing under a waterfall:  you get exhausted trying to keep your balance, and end up more drowned than hydrated.

Nonetheless, I did get quite a bit from both books, enough for each to merit its own, upcoming, review.  At first I was just going to include very brief comments on them in this post, but "very brief" and I don't keep company much.  There's a reason my Tweets are mostly hyperlinks back here.

The Wise Woman: A Parable (also known as The Lost Princess, and as A Double Story) by George MacDonald (1875)

My project to read all of George MacDonald's books in chronological order (95 by 65 item #61) led me recently to The Wise Woman, and I can well see why C.S. Lewis classed it as one of MacDonald's very best stories, along with Phantastes, the Curdie books, The Golden Key, and Lilith.  It's a delight through and through, and more than most fits my prime criterion for a good book:  A good book inspires me to be a better person.  I realize that distinction doesn't sound very impressive.  I don't mean a moralistic book, or a book that tells me to be better; rather, one written in such a way as to provoke, deep within, both the desire to improve and the hope that improvement is not impossible.

The Wise Woman well deserves what Lewis said about the mythopoeic genre—at which MacDonald excelled:

[I]t produces works which give us (at the first meeting) as much delight and (on prolonged acquaintance) as much wisdom and strength as the works of the greatest poets. It is in some ways more akin to music than to poetry—or at least to most poetry. It goes beyond the expression of things we have already felt. It arouses in us sensations we have never had before, never anticipated having, as though we had broken out of our normal mode of consciousness and "possessed joys not promised to our birth." It gets under our skin, hits us at a level deeper; than our thoughts or even our passions, troubles oldest certainties till all questions are reopened, and in general shocks us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives.

Have I made it sound too intimidating?  Never mind, then.  It's short (116 pages), it's free on Kindle (under the title, A Double Story), and entirely grandchild-safe.

Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill by Gretchen Rubin (Ballentine Books, 2003)

What can Gretchen Rubin, famous for her books on happiness (The Happiness Project, Happier at Home), add to the multitude of books written about Churchill?  Plenty, it turns out—at least if you are as ignorant of history as I am.  Porter found it less interesting, because for him, there was little new.

My own interest in this book was piqued for a couple of reasons.  While I was checking our library for Rubin's latest book, Better than Before, this—written well before her happiness books—popped up.  Because we had recently watched the excellent Great Courses series on Churchill, I snapped it up.

My knowledge of Churchill being essentially no more than I had learned through those lectures, it was good, not tiresome, to hear the same stories again.  Plus, the strength of Rubin's book is not in depth or special insight, but because she pulls together views of the man from many different biographical sources, demonstrating in the process just how difficult it is to write a biography—and impossible to write an unbiased one.  In fact, the only real weakness I see in Rubin's book is that she can't hide her own great admiration for the man:  she can't write the opposing side convincingly.  But the facts are there, positive and negative, and I highly recommend Forty Ways as an easy-to-read introduction to this brilliant, complex man and his indomitable spirit.