Multiple readings

As a rule, I try to avoid reading multiple books at once. I'm not great at juggling multiple storylines or thought processes, and once I start a book I like to press through it as quickly as possible so I can move on to the next one. That being said, I'm actually moving back and forth between six books all at once right now:

• Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining and Bad Attitudes... in You and Your Kids by Scott Turansky. This is one we're reading as part of a small group with some friends. We're supposed to get through one chapter a week, so it'll take about three months to get through the whole thing.
• Choose the Life: Exploring a Faith that Embraces Discipleship by Bill Hull. Part of ANOTHER small group we're in. I'm about halfway through. It's very challenging to my long-bred idea of how to "do church," and there are elements that I find very difficult to come to terms with. But it's certainly pushing back some of my horizons.
• The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann. This is my current "fun" book, the one I read while relaxing in bed or laid out on the couch. It's a story of post-Victorian era explorer Fawcett and his quest for a lost city in the Amazon jungle. Basically, it's about a guy way manlier than I can even conceive.
• NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson. As a rule, I find parenting books kind of faddish. It seems to me that parenting should be a pretty instinctive thing. I don't mean we shouldn't THINK about how to parent, or that it should be EASY, but that over-analyzing it doesn't seem like the right approach either. This book documents studies showing that much of what we would consider the obviously correct approach to parenting can be wrong. This is one of the most eye-opening books I've read in a long time.
• Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages by Daniel Nettle. This one is a tough read, so I usually only get through a chapter or so at a time. The writing isn't really superb, and many of their conclusions seem a little naive and politically-motivated, but the subject itself is interesting enough to keep me coming back.
• Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution: A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First by Alister McGrath. This is the book that is absolutely kicking my butt. I asked a friend of mine for a suggestion about a biography of Martin Luther and he steered me to this epic tome about everything Reformation-related. I've found that I can't read it right before bed - it gets my brain spun up and I have trouble going to sleep. The problem is that the book is enormous, so it'll take me quite a while to get through it. But as a protestant Christian it's amazing to me to see the way so much of what I believe came to be.

The nice thing is that all of these except Choose the Life are on my Kindle, so I'm not having any trouble keeping track of where I left something. Hopefully I can finish a couple of these out before Christmas and get my list down to a (relatively) more manageable four books.

Flashforward

Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This is one of the most poorly-written books I've ever read. While an interesting basis for a sci-fi book, the execution is extremely sub-par. Sawyer writes like a fifth-grader who is telling his class about a summer trip to Disney World.

Much of the book takes place at CERN, a particle accelerator in Switzerland. Sawyer adds details about the location clearly included only to prove that he's been there, completely unnecessary details like where the fire extinguishers are located. I understand the need to include details in order to create a picture in the reader's mind, but much of the minutiae he includes is completely extraneous.

On the opposite end, the characters are shallow and underdeveloped. Many are there simply to create a structure on which to develop a plotline; we care little about where they're going or why. Ultimately they seems like a set of people who are all just wandering in different directions with no clear purpose.

Most annoyingly, the characters have a tendency to deliver long, very artificial diatribes that allow Sawyer to communicate his philosophies. Science fiction has a long history of comparing and contrasting science and theology, and when done properly it can be very thought-provoking. In this case, the practice was too in-your-face, too overt to be taken seriously. I did not for one minute believe that these characters would actually have conversations such as these.

The book was the basis for ABC's new television show of the same name. Seeing parallels between the events of the book and those on the TV show is interesting. The premise of the book itself is intriguing, but the flaws are too numerous make it worth struggling through.

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Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English by John H. McWhorter


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Since I listened to his downloadable lecture series about linguistics earlier this year, I've enjoyed McWhorter's down-to-earth but well-informed way of communicating how language has evolved. This book focuses primarily on how the English language itself has come to be, with an emphasis on how Celtic and Norse languages influenced Old and Middle English. McWhorter is good at describing rather dry topics in ways that keep the reader engaged. I suspect this isn't the last book on this subject that'll grace my Kindle...

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Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 - 7:35 PM

I rinse out the rest of my beef stew from the bowl and put it in the dishwasher. Ann has listened to me cry tonight for things even I can't comprehend. She understands that it is hard to deal with all the unknowns of the situation. She understands that we'll probably never know anything about the recipient, how he lived, how he died. But she knows that there was no other choice to be made. We had an opportunity, a moment in time to do something for someone else. We can't even say whether it was successful or worth the effort. But, she says, we would do it exactly the same way next time. She is - as always - right.

The National Marrow Donor Program connects people willing to donate bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells to people genetically identified as possible recipients. The success of their work is dependent on having a large database of potential donors in order to create the best matches for those in need. To learn more go to Marrow.org, or consider joining the registry.

Thursday, January 15th, 2009 - 12:30 PM

Today is the first day we'll be conducting an integrated sim with the Japanese simulator for the HTV mission. I've been preparing for this sim for about a year now and am totally living on adrenaline. As the adrenaline slowly wears off, I plan to transition to caffeine. The ten-hour sim doesn't start until 3:00, but I want to have plenty of time to get ready, to mentally prepare for a long night of what are sure to be some very stressful situations. My cell phone rings; an unknown number. It's a representative from the National Marrow Donor Program. They think they've found a match and would like me to come in for further testing. I agree, set up an appointment to go to the blood bank, and hang up. Added to the stress of the upcoming simulation, it feels like too much to process right now. I file it away for later, remembering the last two times I got this call and how it turned out to be nothing. Probably won't be anything this time either.

Saturday, February 28th, 2009 - 8:30 AM

Ryan and I stand among a crowd of thousands. Somehow I'd let him talk me into participating in a 5k run with him. Anyone who knows me at all knows that running isn't really my "thing." In much the same way that root canals aren't my "thing." Later I found out that the run was scheduled for the same day as my first round of shots. I complete the race in about 35 minutes, crossing the finish line with the theme song from Indiana Jones blaring through my iPod. After a short break I go back to my car, put on a clean shirt, and drive to the clinic.

Martha is already there waiting for me. I know what to expect but I'm not a huge fan of getting shots. Today I'll get two of them. After the blood draw. And let me tell you, those two shots hurt a lot more than those tiny little needles would lead you to believe. I have to sit with her for an hour after the shots to make sure I don't have an adverse reaction.

I go home feeling a little shaky and a lot tired, but I suspect that's mostly because of the 5k. Martha will come to my home every morning for the next three days, each time giving me two more injections of filgrastim. At the end of it all, I will have received a total of ten filgrastim shots. My only hope is that it might turn me into something cool, like Spider-Man. I will ultimately be disappointed as "achy" is not, apparently, a superpower.

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 - 9:00 AM

I am, of all things, excited about a day off, especially on a Wednesday. The last couple of months at work have been very busy. I have two small children at home. The thought of sitting in a chair all day long reading books and watching movies is very appealing even if I have to have blood sucked out of my body by a large machine to get the day off. I have three DVDs in my bag (The Dark Knight, Madagascar 2, and Wanted), and I've even brought my brand-new Kindle.

My entire body is sore. The filgrastim injections I've received since Saturday have increased the amount of peripheral blood stem cells in my system, resulting in flu-like symptoms. Mostly I've just been tired and my back has ached. It's certainly not incapacitating, and nothing compared to what the recipient has been going through. But it gets old after a while, especially after the late-night simulation I had on Monday. Hot showers and ibuprofen help some, but I'm ready to have this stuff sucked out of my body so I can get back to normal.

Martha is there with the technicians. They expect the procedure to take about four hours based on my size and the number of stem cells the recipient requires. I tell them I've got at least six hours of movies so they can take as long as they need. The room is very clinical in appearance but then, it is a clinic. There are several couches and they show me to mine. Over the next fifteen minutes the technician inserts a needle into my left arm that draws the blood out and sends it through a centrifuge machine, separating out the layer of peripherical blood stem cells. Another line feeds into my right arm sending everything except the PBSCs back into my system.

Over the course of the day others come and go for treatment. A middle-aged woman is wheeled in next to me. She is clearly very sick, presumably with cancer, and is receiving chemotherapy. I think about the last time I sat this close to someone receiving chemotherapy treatment and hope her story ends as well.

I refrain from drinking very much. Once I'm hooked up to the machine there's no un-hooking so if I need to pee they draw a curtain around me and hand me a plastic bottle. Fortunately this is only necessary once over the course of the day. Admittedly the process is much simpler as a guy but handling all the equipment with one arm mostly incapacitated and the other completely immobilized takes a little more concentration than normal. Going through the process once is more than enough.

An LCD TV is mounted within easy viewing distance and the technician is happy to swap out movies as often as I want. The apheresis machine requires constant management by the technician and his company is appreciated.

We sit next to each other for seven hours.