From the back cover:
“Why do we look the way we do?
Neil Shubin, the paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the ‘fish with hands,’ tells the story of our bodies as you’ve never heard it before. By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look, and function, like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm.”

My thoughts:
I really enjoyed this book when I read it last year as a library copy. So much so that I decided to send it toStephen Harper for the What Is Stephen Harper Reading: BookCrossing Edition Release Challenge.

Rather than try to recover my initial thoughts, I went back to some posts I made on the BookCrossing Book Talk forum and will quote them here.

I [...] am now reading Your Inner Fish which seems okay so far, but the author seems like he’s aiming at someone far younger or with far less general knowledge than me. It’s like he’s talking to a 15 year old. It’s also annoying, especially in a book about science, to have measurements in US imperial instead of metric measures.

Finished Your Inner Fish, which was pretty good on the information side, though I was less than impressed by the style (just a bit too condescending, like he was talking to a child). Anyway, the book was well worth reading. I was aching for some science and got it. Very fascinating discussion of various anatomical features humans have (e.g. limbs, eyes, ears, bodies) and from what ancestors we got them (fish, microbes, worms). Interesting stuff like how the bones in mammalian ears evolved from jawbones of fish, and how our genes show evidence of messy evolution over time rather than any kind of rational design.

There are similarities even with fish and chicken embryos. It’s all very fascinating.

From the book:
Watching the process of development brought about a huge intellectual transformation in me. From such simple embryonic beginnings–small blobs of cells–came wonderfully complex birds, frogs, and trout comprising trillions of cells arranged in just the right way. But there was more. The fish, amphibian, and chicken embryos were like nothing I had ever seen before in biology. They all looked generally alike. All of them had a head with gill arches. All of them had a little brain that began its development from three swellings. All of them had little limb buds. In fact, the limbs were to become my thesis, the focus of my next three years’ work. Here, in comparing how the skeleton develops in birds, salamanders, frogs, and turtles, I was finding that limbs as different as bird wings and frog legs looked very similar during their development. In seeing these embryos, I was seeing a common architecture. The species ended up looking different, but they started from a generally similar place. Looking at embryos, it almost seems that the differences among mammals, birds, amphibians, and fish simply pale in comparison with their fundamental similarities.

Flies have genes that are associated with development of sections of their bodies and those same genes in us are associated with the same regions of our bodies. Shark heads and human heads have the same gill arches and nerve structures. Very cool.

It’s also amazing to think of how life went from being a bunch of single celled organisms into all the myriads of species we see today, all from miniscule changes over time.

He also has some very interesting facts about weaknesses we have due to our evolutionary history. For example, hiccups are a holdover from our amphibian days when as tadpoles we needed to close our airway.

QueenBoadicea wrote:
> Thanks for the critique. The condescending
> tone you mention is off-putting but
> perhaps the author was simply trying to
> make the book accessible to the average
> reader and didn’t want to discourage them
> by making it too esoteric.

Yeah, it kind of sounds like he’s used to talking to students who may not be the brightest on the block. But then, I’m sure many people would like the style because he sounds like a ‘regular guy’ explainin’ stuff & not some ivory tower academic or esoteric scientist who’s forgotten how to speak English.

LOL. I guess my problem was that it was *too* readable. But that was only a mild annoyance. Overall, I thought it was good and thought-provoking.

From the back cover:
“‘For God’s sake, come!’ Unfortunately, by the time Hercule Poirot received Monsieur Renauld’s urgent plea, the millionaire was already dead—stabbed in the back, lying in a freshly dug grave on the golf course of his adjoining Merlinville estate. There’s no lack of suspects: his wife, whose dagger served as the weapon; his embittered son, who would have killed for independence; and his mistress, who refused to be ignored—and each felt deserving of the dead man’s fortune. The police think they’ve found the culprit. Poirot has his doubts. A second murder proves him right.”

My thoughts:
This is Agatha Christie’s second novel featuring Hercule Poirot and his sidekick Captain Hastings. From the title, I was a little concerned that golf would be heavily featured (as apparently have most book cover designers for the novel), but in fact it isn’t really mentioned at all. One of the bodies in the case is found on property which happens to be a golf course under construction, but that’s the only connection to the game.

In this one, Poirot using his knowledge of human psychology, observation of the people involved, and his memory of a prior murder case is pitted against a French detective using “modern” methods of evidence collection and analysis. Hastings, blinded by the attractive and/or interesting women he encounters, is particularly foolish (for example, leaving one of them alone with the body for several minutes).

Some of the twists in the plot I figured out, but still I was surprised at learning the identity of the killer, so overall it was a good mystery. I didn’t care for the object of Hastings’ affection and had to agree with his initial dislike of her but it will be interesting to see how their relationship plays out in future books. Next comes a collection of Poirot short stories.

From the publisher:
“Possession, for which Byatt won England”s prestigious Booker Prize, was praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1990. ‘On academic rivalry and obsession, Byatt is delicious. On the nature of possession–the lover by the beloved, the biographer by his subject–she is profound,’ said The Sunday Times (London). The New Yorker dubbed it ‘more fun to read than The Name of the Rose . . . Its prankish verve [and] monstrous richness of detail [make for] a one-woman variety show of literary styles and types.’ The novel traces a pair of young academics–Roland Michell and Maud Bailey–as they uncover a clandestine love affair between two long-dead Victorian poets. Interwoven in a mesmerizing pastiche are love letters and fairytales, extracts from biographies and scholarly accounts, creating a sensuous and utterly delightful novel of ideas and passions.”

My thoughts:
At first glance, this looked like exactly the type of book I love. It has all the right elements: a complex plot (actually multiple plots), partly in the past (Victorian England), partly in the more recent past (1986), somewhat interesting characters, academia and erudition, a collage of styles (including “quoted” Victorian poetry, journals, and letters), discussions of symbolism, and a mystery at the heart.

It’s not often that a book like that wins a Booker and gets glowing reviews, so I was prepared for a masterpiece. I was prepared for this one to make my all-time favourites list. Objectively speaking, it is undoubtedly the former, but sadly it didn’t achieve the latter. I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps when it comes down to it, I didn’t really care for any of the characters. They all seemed so unlikeable and self-absorbed. I also found much of the poetry tedious and rather uninteresting. I did enjoy the narrative variety and the setup and revelation of the mystery (though I was left at the end still wondering about one specific part of the Victorian timeline story). So, in the end, I have to say I liked it but didn’t love it.

From the publisher:
“In this provocative must-read, the preeminent scientist-and world’s most prominent atheist—Richard Dawkins—asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight on the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe’s wonders than any faith could ever muster. With rigor and wit, Dawkins eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. This is a book that challenges all of us to test our beliefs, no matter what beliefs we hold.”

My thoughts:
When I first heard about all the hype surrounding this book (when it first came out), I was kind of turned off. It (along with Hitchens’ book) sounded, well, it sounded mean. I’ve never had belief in the Christian god, though in the past I’ve flirted with both a kind of philosophical/spiritual Platonism (you know, the one that says “God is real (and perfect and good) but religions aren’t factually true”) and spiritual pantheism/panentheism (“Nature/the Universe is divine and religions are just ways of communicating with that divinity, and some of those ways are morally & intellectually better* than others”). So I didn’t have a vested interest in protecting Christianity from condemnation. However, I still retained that very liberal attitude that Culture (including Religion) should be respected to the degree that it does no harm: if you want to believe that the execution of some Iron Age carpenter-cum-preacher somehow makes you a better person, well, okay, who am I to judge you? And why should I dismiss the possibility that supernatural things could happen (albeit perceptually filtered through different cultures’ mythologies)? It just seemed like Dawkins was going out of his way to rain on the parade, and to do so without having proof that there wasn’t something real lying behind all those trappings. I didn’t really care to read this book at that time.

But I did read Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. Which sparked in me a renewed interest in science. From there, I searched for other sources of scientific writing (both in print and online). One day, Carl Zimmer posted about Carl Sagan’s tv series Cosmos and I promptly watched the whole series from beginning to end. But I wanted more so I looked on YouTube for more vids about science and when The Greatest Show on Earth came out, I was quite keen to read it. It’s very difficult to learn what’s going on in scientific circles today without bumping up against the attack campaign of the Creationists.

All of which eventually led to my becoming quite acquainted with Dawkins, both as a biologist and as an advocate for Rationalism. So by the time I picked up this audiobook, I was pretty much so familiar with the contents from recorded lectures and interviews, nothing came as a surprise. Not only have I ventured to read The God Delusion, but I have to say that I agree with it for the most part. Under the banner “harm” I no longer include just physical harm, systemic discrimination (e.g. racism, misogyny, bigotry against homosexuals), an unhealthy attitude to the planet & its other inhabitants, and cultural genocide. Now I include violence to truth, obstruction of education, personal indoctrination of children, and the waste of (financial and human) resources sucked up by religion.

The problem with doing this review is that I don’t really recall much of the book! I finished listening to it back in February and because I was listening, the content has kind of blended into all the lectures and interviews I’ve watched and listened to over the past year or two. A few things do stand out though: discussions of agnosticism and Spinoza’s/Einstein’s pantheism; a discussion about morality without gods; and Dawkins’ appeal to quit saddling children with the religions (and corresponding labels) of their parents.

Oh, and one more thing: I didn’t find it mean at all. Though often caricatured as “strident” and “shrill” Dawkins is actually rather kind and rational (fancy that). He’s just passionate about scientific truth, and like all lovers wants everyone to share in his joy. Hmm. Yes, that and he can’t abide those people who knowingly and deliberately hide it, lie about it, and brainwash others about it. It’s well worth reading—even if you’re religious I doubt you’ll actually be offended by most of what Dawkins says and all of it is well worth considering.

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*Many who are adherents of this general belief would say that no religion is inherently inferior, that we should all just accommodate each other’s religious without analysis or criticism. But I had early on formed a dislike of some aspects of Christian theology so I always discriminated between religions.