How to Read a French Fry

Book by Russ Parsons

I enjoy the kitchen science in this book that's along side the recipes. There is nice discussion on deep frying and how to do a great job at it. 

Bird by Bird

By Anne Lamott

Lamott’s book on how to write has five me much to think about. She focuses on fiction and takes us through the grueling, embarrassing, frustrating process of churning out a story.

Two points which make me think my blog does not make me a better fiction writer…

“New writers often make the mistake of making themselves the lead of the story “

“You are making this mistake of assuming everything that happens to you is interesting “

The Autumn Ghost

How the battle against a polio epidemic revolutionized modern medical care.

Book by Hannah Wunsch

During the 1950s, the fight against polio brought together several major shifts in medical care, all  detailed by Dr. Hannah Wunsch in her history of the 1952 Copenhagen epidemic.

Before this period, anesthesiology was often treated as a secondary trade rather than a dedicated specialty. For conditions like severe polio, tetanus, poisoning, or major surgical recovery, the primary challenge was keeping a paralyzed body alive when it could not breathe on its own. Anesthesiologists possessed the specific skills needed to manage airways, leading to the birth of the modern Intensive Care Unit.

This era also reshaped mechanical ventilation. While iron lungs had been used since the late 1920s, the 1952 epidemic exposed their limits when hospital wards ran out of machines. Doctors in Copenhagen shifted to positive-pressure ventilation—delivering air directly into the lungs through a tracheostomy tube—which proved vastly more effective and permanently changed respiratory medicine.

Progress was not always linear. In the 1930s, poorly designed vaccine trials caused paralysis in participants, setting back human trials for nearly two decades. Decades later, during the 1955 rollout of Jonas Salk’s vaccine, manufacturing flaws at Cutter Laboratories led to batches containing live virus. This incident damaged public trust and contributed to early vaccine skepticism. It also prompted health authorities to establish much stricter federal oversight and manufacturing regulations.

East of Eden

By John Steinbeck

Looking over my library history, I see that I’ve been picking at East of Eden for two and half years.  While I have a desire to read great literature, I can loose focus when the book is finally on my e-reader.

Having said that, East of Eden is a wonderfully written, multi-generation epic. It explores the idea of good, evil and choice. You must vs you may. 

AI says…

Major Themes

• Good Versus Evil: The novel questions whether human behavior is fated or chosen.
• Timshel: A central Hebrew word explored in the book meaning "thou mayest"—signifying that humans have the free will to choose goodness over evil.
• The Weight of Acceptance: The struggle of children trying to earn a parent's love and the destructive power when that love is missing.

The Hare with the Amber Eyes

By Edmund De Waal

I’m on a quest to understand the roots of antisemitism. Reading The Hare with Amber Eyes, the history of a family of secular Jewish bankers in Vienna. It showed me how integrated, needed, and influential a Jewish family could be, yet how they were always kept a little separated because of their background. 

The rise of the Nazi party decimated the family. A few escaped. Others died by genocide, malnutrition, or suicide. It was difficult to prepare for. Antisemitism had existed for centuries. The family always dealt with it. But the Nazis were different. They arrived by surprise, like a tsunami.

A few main takeaways I want to remember:

The family members who survived were the ones who left Vienna before the war started. Some destructive forces can’t be stopped from the inside. Sometimes the lesson is to get out of the way.

The Nazi state weaponized its civil service to systematically isolate and target people, even amid internal administrative chaos. Modern politics feels chaotic, but there is some comfort that today’s power structures lack that unified, weaponized momentum.

 

The Life of Pi

The movie trailer deceived me. The image of a boy and a tiger on a boat evoked Calvin and Hobbes. The book is most certainly not that. A ship transporting a zoo sinks in the Pacific. Amongst the survivors are the boy and the tiger. Their time together is horrifying tale of survival.

Or is it? The book is known for its philosophy. Which, I think, is loosely that if two different stories fit the facts, then choose the story that inspires you the most.

I disagree with that philosophy. Of course I am a pragmatic realist. This does not diminish the book. It’s wonderful writing. It’s a testament to the author that one can disagree with the book, without rejecting it. 

There is another way to interpret the book. That the boy was trapped on a life boat with a cannibal. After being rescued, rather than face those horrors, he tells a story of being trapped on the boat with a tiger. 

Build the Life You Want

Aurthur C. Brooks and Oprah

Happy is not the same thing as good, or flourishing, or vibrant. Do you only want to be happy?

"Happiness is not a destination, it's a direction."

"The macronutrients of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose."

"Enjoyment takes an urge for pleasure and adds two important things: communion and consciousness." 

"Satisfaction... is the thrill you get from accomplishing a goal."

"We can make do without enjoyment for a while, even without a lot of satisfaction. Without purpose however, we are utterly lost."

"The common strategy of trying to eliminate suffering from life to get happier is futile and mistaken. We must instead look for the why of life to make pain an opportunity for growth."

"Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose. To get happier is to get more of these elements, in a balanced way-- not all of one and none of another. But if you were reading closely, you noticed one funny thing about all three: they all have some unhappiness."

"The secret to the best life is to accept your unhappiness (so you can learn and grow) and manage the feelings that result."

"Your emotions are signals to your conscious brain that something is going on that requires your attention and action-- that's all they are. Your conscious brain, if you choose to use it, gets to decide how you respond to them."

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-- the choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."