Some People Juggle Geese

The book is about the titular character, and is set in a town in 1840s Missouri. While I have been a Southerner, I have never have been a mischievous little boy. Therefore, I find Tom Sawyer’s daily life a little difficult to relate to. But that’s what books are for: they let you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Or bare feet, as the case may be.

Even if you’ve never read a word of the book, or watched a movie adaptation, you probably already know about Tom’s cleverness in getting his pals to paint a fence on his behalf. But did you know that Tom witnesses a murder? And goes on a holiday from civilization on an island in a river? And finds stolen treasure in a cave with miles of tunnels? There’s plenty of entertainment in the plot.

The themes relate to honor and honesty, about doing the right thing when it matters, and not worrying too much about phony social rules as long as you take care of the people you care about.

Meanwhile, throughout the novel, Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens, if you prefer), offers, in deadpan style, a number of sharp observations of human nature. See below for some examples.

Continue reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American literature
Date started / date finished: 18-Mar-25 to 20-Mar-25
Length: 248 pages
ISBN: B072F1WKW1
Originally published in: 1876/2017
Amazon link: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The famous Berkeley psychologist David Krech once made the observation, “There is no phenomenon, however complex, which when examined carefully will not turn out to be even more complex.”
—Mind Matters (page 175)

How much has our understanding of brains progressed since the publication of this popular science book in 1988? Maybe a little, but many studies serve to reveal effects without shedding light on their causes, or otherwise uncover new unknowns. Complete understanding of the connection between the brain and the mind, and the mind/brain’s connection to the body, will, I think, always be just over the horizon, like world peace, the cure for cancer, and flying cars—especially if we keep talking about brains as computers (which Gazzaniga does in the first paragraph of his introduction), but that’s another story.

Meanwhile, brain scientist Michael S. Gazzaniga offers his thoughts, informed by his professional experience, on twelve relatable subjects:

1. Pain
2. Memory and Thinking after Forty
3. Intelligence
4. Crazy Thoughts
5. Anxiety
6. Depression
7. Obsessions and Compulsions
8. Addiction
9. Love
10. Sleeping and Dreaming
11. Stress
12. Healing

It’s an interesting bunch of topics. The chapter on addiction was surprisingly political. Gazzaniga makes a case for legalizing drugs (and taxing them) to prevent the harms that arise from black markets (and funding programs for treatment of addiction). He says addiction is not the sort of thing that can snowball into an epidemic. From his standpoint, some small, stable percentage of people will inevitably be addicts; meanwhile everyone else is pretty much okay.

Gazzaniga’s writing is informed in part by his work on split-brain studies. Ever heard about those? Some epileptics have undergone surgery to disconnect the two normally connected brain hemispheres to reduce the occurrence of debilitating seizures. Studies conducted on such subjects involve presenting a picture or instructions to only one half—the left half—of the visual system (thus to only one half—the right half—of the brain). The result is spurious explanations supplied by the left half, which controls language, for the individual’s response. Somewhere in the left half of the brain is a mind module that really wants things to make sense, even when they don’t. Gazzaniga calls this module “the interpreter”.

The book offers a framework that considers both psychology and neurobiology in explaining “a wide variety of very personal mind states we all experience at one time or another.” It acknowledges individual differences due to brain development as well as genetic influences on brain chemistry.

I’m looking forward to reading a more recent book by Gazzaniga: The Consciousness Instinct.

When and Why I Read Mind Matters

Another brain-related book!

Genre: cognitive science
Date started / date finished: 28-Feb-25 to 13-Mar-25
Length: 244 pages
ISBN: 0395500958
Originally published in: 1988
Amazon link: Mind Matters

How did I come to read this book?

I read Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne because it’s on a lot of lists of classic books, and I’ve read other top Verne books, but not this one.

Then, because I somehow thought Journey to the Center of the Earth had more dinosaurs in it, I read The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, which is possibly the one I was thinking of.

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle made me think of Michael Crichton’s novels The Lost World and also Congo, which I read in 2010.

Congo was (according to Wikipedia) inspired by King Solomon’s Mines, a novel by H. Rider Haggard, which I’ve also repeatedly seen on lists of classic books, so I read King Solomon’s Mines.

Then, because the novel She is by the same author as King Solomon’s Mines, and I’ve seen it on lists of classics (some indicating that it was an early science-fiction or early feminist novel), I read it too.

Phew!

Overall impression? What a creepy story. Really not my style.

There were some interesting psychological/philosophical observations, and some poetic, if melancholy, descriptive passages, but mainly the atmosphere was, in general, unpleasantly macabre. The physical surroundings of the characters consisted almost entirely of caves and tombs, except when the characters were traveling on stormy seas or across mosquito-infested swamps. There is no joy in this book whatsoever; the survival of the narrator is a matter of narrow escape—of relief rather than victory. But maybe that’s the point? Reading the book is like passing through a haunted house: you frighten yourself thoroughly with impossibilities, and then return to the real world with a new appreciation for normalcy.

So yeah. Well done, H. Rider Haggard. Thanks, I hate it.

See below for some more specific observations on this unsettling book from 1886.

Continue reading She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard

When and Why I Read She: A History of Adventure

This is the other famous book by the author of King Solomon's Mines.

Genre: classic adventure
Date started / date finished: 28-Feb-25 to 08-Mar-25
Length: 245 pages
ISBN:
Originally published in: 1886/2006/2020

Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne (1864), and The Lost World, by Arthur Conan Doyle (1912), initially seemed to be two versions of the same book. Verne apparently inspired Doyle (and others, including Edgar Rice Burroughs).

Lost World has a lot more overt action and adventure than Journey, which makes it quite different in the middle and end, but there are definitely some similarities between the two books in the beginning.

The setup for both is that a young man who wishes to gain the favor of a young woman goes with an irritable scientist on a quest to remote part of the world on the basis of a report that nobody believes except the irritable scientist.

Continue reading The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

When and Why I Read The Lost World

Similar to Journey to the Center of the Earth?

Genre: adventure
Date started / date finished: 16-Feb-25 to 22-Feb-25
Length: 137 pages
ISBN: B075M831DT
Originally published in: 1912/2017
Amazon link: The Lost World

The subtitle of this copy is “The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.” An alternate subtitle I’ve seen is “The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently.” But I see the book as being more of a history of autism and less of a prophecy or practical manual. That being said, it was fascinating. It’s no wonder the book won an award (the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, now known as the Baillie Gifford Prize).

I bought this book in 2018; I’m glad to have finally read it.

Continue reading Neurotribes by Steve Silberman

When and Why I Read Neurotribes

I've been reading about brains and genetics.

Genre: psychology
Date started / date finished: 05-Feb-25 to 22-Feb-25
Length: 486 pages
ISBN: 9780399185618
Originally published in: 2015/2016
Amazon link: Neurotribes

This adventure is full of realistic true details about, say, strangely geometric basaltic columns, but at the same time, it’s full of absolute nonsense. That’s par for the course for science-fiction, but this is early science-fiction. Now, our science-fiction stories are typically out in space, or in the future. In the time of Jules Verne, there were still many mysteries much closer to home.

Therefore, to read and enjoy this book in spite of advances in geological knowledge, you have to ignore the voice in your head that says, “Of course there isn’t a cavity deep inside the earth that sustains plant and animal life similar to the plant and animal life of prehistoric times.” You have to think to yourself, “What if there were?”

What if your uncle and employer, a grumpy old scientist—and the godfather of your charming girlfriend—proposed to go down into the theoretically hollow earth (which you believe is unbearably hot) based on some explorer’s writings from centuries ago? You’d think he was crazy, and you certainly wouldn’t want to go with him.

But your charming girlfriend tells you it is needful for you to go out into the world boldly and make a name for yourself. So you go. But you’re expecting your uncle’s crazy quest to fail at every moment, and you’re looking forward to throwing in the towel, turning around, and going home.

Eventually, you concede that you were wrong; but by that time, you’re more than a bit worried about how you’ll make it back alive to tell of the marvels you’ve seen. You descended into the bowels of the earth in a volcanic crater in Iceland, but you’ll emerge from a different volcano… in Italy!

When and Why I Read Journey to the Center of the Earth

This is one of the more famous Jules Verne stories. It keeps popping up on lists of classics. But I haven't read it, so I'm reading it.

Genre: sci-fi/adventure
Date started / date finished: 07-Feb-25 to 16-Feb-25
Length: 146 pages
ISBN: B074W95Z2Y
Originally published in: 1864/2017
Amazon link: Journey to the Center of the Earth