fiction writing reading list

This fall, I took a Fiction Writing Workshop at the University of Texas through the Extension school program. I am more interested in Creative Non-Fiction, but as I haven't really taken any creative writing courses, I thought it would be a good experience nonetheless. I definitely benefited a lot from forcing myself to write (we submitted 3 pieces plus a final rewrite of one) and then going through the workshopping experience with my classmates. Each week, we also had assigned readings, mostly in our textbook.

The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction
50 North American Stories Since 1970

Our assigned readings:

• Rick Bass, The Hermit's Story
• Sanda Cisneros, Never Marry a Mexican
• Jhumpa Lahiri, A Temporary Matter
• David Leavitt, Territory
• Kelly Link, Stone Animals
• Susan Minot, Lust
• Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
• Julie Orringer, Pilgrims
• ZZ Packer, Brownies

There were some other short stories that we read as copies and handouts as well as some other notes on writing. We kept a reading response journal, so perhaps I will type up some of my responses to the stories as individual posts. 

I've not been much of a short story reader, and I still have mixed feelings about it, but it was definitely helpful to read it while trying to write it. It is really surprising to see how different short stories can be and what the author can do within the span of a few to twenty pages. I'm casually reading some of the other stories in the anthology, but I think I prefer a longer medium. 

Bossypants

I love 30 Rock and I love Tina Fey. So, when I saw that Ms. Fey had written a book, I knew I wanted to read it. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that my stepdad/mom had bought the book on our Amazon account, which meant I could read it on my phone (oh, technology!). Even better, the version we have has some pictures and even Tina reading a chapter outloud.

Bossypants
Tina Fey

Well, for starters, let's let the book speak for itself. Because when you have someone as hilarious as Tina Fey writing, what more can I really offer?

Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true. At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.(Includes Special, Never-Before-Solicited Opinions on Breastfeeding, Princesses, Photoshop, the Electoral Process, and Italian Rum Cake!)

This book was so good and so funny that I read it in two days while laughing uproariously by myself in my little apartment. You, too, can have a great experience like that just by reading this book! I love a book that makes me belly laugh because the author is just that good at comedy. I learned a lot about Tina Fey's life from this book, but mostly, I was just really entertained. I haven't been reading much lately, and this reminded me how much fun it can be.

I will absolutely read it again, and you better at least give it a try. Just go to Barnes and Noble and snag one to read while lurking in the shelves or in one of their comfy chairs. If you get self-conscious at how much you are laughing in public and appearing insane to others, then buy it. Or you can be like me and be comfortable in your off-beat persona. Or you can go to the google books preview and sample it on your computer on the interwebs. Whatever floats your boat.

Programming for Relationships

This is a short little article my mom sent me that our family therapist wrote. I really like her because she lets you talk, then she clarifies the problem/issue, and then she gives you manageable action steps to help improve it. It isn't just listening and asking how we feel, she really helps you feel like you can change the situation and your reaction. Anyway, I like that she doesn't just feel like a bogus money hole where you go to vent. She writes these little articles from time to time and my mom forwards them along to me.

Programming for Relationships
Carol Henry

In fact, it's so short, I'll just repost it here for you to read:

Our first experience with love comes from our parents, and this interaction becomes the pattern for future romantic relationships.  Children assume that their parents love them, so it's only logical that they come to see the way their parents treat them as loving behavior, even when that behavior is painful. 

As a result, the child of an abusive parent will often marry an abusive spouse; someone who grew up with a constantly-criticizing parent is programmed to marry an unpleasable spouse; and the child of an adoring, indulgent parent will seek out and find an adoring spouse. 

Even though romance is a different kind of love, we unconsciously assume that our mates or or lovers will want from us the same behavior that pleased our parents. 

If your parent liked docile, obedient children, you'll probably find yourself acting that way, trying hard to "please" your lover, even if you're decisive and assertive in your career.   

If your parents liked you best when you made good grades or excelled in sports, you may assume your spouse's love is contingent on your achievements.  

If you had a stormy relationship with one of your parents, full of fighting and making up, you may be uncomfortable with a calm relationship, mistaking harmony for lack of interest.

Love
Recent research sheds light on how childhood relationships with parents can affect adult romantic relationships. In one study: 

• People who felt their parents had been especially loving, responsive and warm, were found to be securely attached as adults, having long-lasting, happy and trusting love relationships.
• Those who felt generally positive about their parents, but whose feelings changed as they aged, becoming harsher and more negative with time, were considered avoidant. They felt uneasy with closeness.
• People who had mixed feelings about their parents were found to be anxious adults who worried about loved ones leaving them. 

 I found this really interesting. I haven't yet taken the time to really think through my relationships with my parents in this way and compare it to my romantic relationships, but I can definitely see how it is probably accurate. I have compared the boys I have dated to my two, quite different, dads, and can see parallels in their personalities, but I never really thought of it in terms of our relationship and their treatment of me. I'm curious to see what I find when I think about it and analyze it. Maybe it will help me make better, more conscious decisions about who I should and shouldn't date.

shanghai book club

The same college counselor moved to another school this year in Shanghai, and she started a book club there too. I snagged this list of their books to share.


October: Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

December: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

January: Freedom: a novel by Jonathan Franzen

February: The Marriage Plot by Jefferey Eugenides

March: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

April: The Paris Wife; A Novel by Paula McLain

May: Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language by Deborah Fallows

The only book of theirs that I have read is Outliers by Gladwell, and I really liked it. He explores why certain people/groups/stereotypes exist for being outliers in their field. I've heard a lot about Jonathan Franzen, so I would definitely like to read that book. I'm sure all of them are great, but we will see if I get around to reading any, and I will share if I do.

BLBC reading list

Last year, the college counselor at the school I worked at in Bulgaria decided that we should have a book club. She named it the Bulgarian Ladies Book Club, though we were all non-Bulgarian but living in Bulgaria, working at the school. I had never done anything like that, but I dearly missed English classes and discussing books, so I was in from the first email. In addition to reading and discussing, another key aspect was eating. Each month, we would have a meeting to discuss a book. One pair would take care of the discussion questions and another pair (usually the ones hosting it at their residence) would make a lot of delicious food. It was wonderful. I really miss it.

We even compiled recipes that I then turned into an orderable book. Check it out here.

Anyway, here is a list of the books that we read over the course of the year together. I think they were trying to set up another book club for this year, so I will see if I can get my hands on that list.


The BLBC 2010 - 2011 Book List:

October:
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

November:
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey by Isabel Fonesca

December:
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

February:
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

March:
Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories by Cynthia Morrison Phoel

April:
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

May:  
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

The Mother Tongue

Bill Bryson makes another appearance. And he will keep on doing so if I ever write about all his books that I've read. This one had the double draw to me of being by Bryson and about the English language.

The Mother Tongue
Bill Bryson

A note: the link above is a link to the google book version of the book, which as far as I can tell, is the electronic version of the whole book.

It took me quite some time to read this, but that is because I was being a lazy pleasure reader and not because it wasn't interesting. It has all of Bryson's trademark factoids and humor, and it outlines the development and use of the language well.

While reading this, I kept thinking of my students in Bulgaria, whom I was trying to teach more about English reading and writing. Bryson makes an effort to explain why English is the strange language that it is, how it got that way, and how it is effecting the world today. There were so many small facts that I learned that I wished I had read the book before going to Bulgaria because I'm pretty sure I could have answered a lot more questions about my language. While I think anyone would benefit from reading this and find it interesting, I think it would be a great book for my students to read. It definitely requires a pretty strong command of the English language, but it explains so many things that we struggle with in the process of learning or teaching or using it that it provides a sense of relief at the clarification.

Some particularly funny parts were when he talked about English dialects, words in other languages (like long German word phrases, Welsh, Australian sayings, English cockney, and so on). He has an entire chapter on names, so obviously much of that is aimed at the comical. Another of the later chapters is on wordplay and the various types of wordplay that exist. My students are already familiar with the lipogram, but there were many types that I had never heard of, like a holorime or a Clerihew.

What the Dog Saw

Last year while I was in Bulgaria, this was one of the books I read. I bought it in Amsterdam after I finished the book club book that I brought with me. I really love Gladwell's books and articles because he researches interesting, real life things and then writes about them. They usually aren't really all that related to each other. This is his most recent book, but I also read two others that I'll get around to posting.

What the Dog Saw
Malcolm Gladwell

A unique thing about this book is that it is a collection of articles/essays that he wrote for the New Yorker. Therefore, each chapter stands alone as a study of whatever subject he chose. Another great thing is that there is a website that has links to all the chapter's original articles, which means you can read the whole book online via the article links.

I used excerpts from one of the chapter/articles in my class in Bulgaria last year. One of the later chapters in the book was about late bloomers and why we associate genius with precocity. I wanted my students to practice reading and analyzing what they read and then comparing it to their lives. I also wanted them to not feel discouraged if they weren't one of the precocious types and may be a late bloomer. It can be very frustrating to struggle in the beginning, and I hope that they (and everyone else) don't give up or have a negative opinion about something just because it isn't easy for them. I think math certainly has this effect on a lot of people. In many respects, I am lucky to understand it well. But I wonder how much of that comes from 4th grade, when I decided that I hated math and didn't like it and my dad said, "no daughter of mine is going to be bad at math," and quizzed me on my times tables and other homework until I knew it like the back of my hand. From then on, I always loved math. I can't really say whether it is related to how my brain works or that I learned to push through the confusion until I figured out how it worked.

The list of chapters from the website with the links and quick snippets of what they are about:


The Pitchman - Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen. (Oct 30, 2000)

The Ketchup Conundrum - Mustard now comes in dozens of different varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same? (Sept 6, 2004)

Blowing Up - How Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy. (Apr 22, 2002)

True Colors - Hair dye and the hidden history of postwar America. (Mar 22, 1999)

John Rock's Error - What the inventor of the birth control pill didn't know about women's health. (Mar 13, 2000)

What the Dog Saw - Cesar Millan and the movements of mastery. (May 22, 2006)

Open Secrets - Enron, intelligence and the perils of too much information. (Jan 8, 2007)

Million Dollar Murray - Why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage. (Feb 13, 2006)

The Picture Problem - Mammography, air power, and the limits of looking. (Dec 13, 2004)

Something Borrowed - Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life? (Nov 22, 2004)

Connecting the Dots - The paradoxes of intelligence reform. (Mar 10, 2003)

The Art of Failure - Why some people choke and others panic. (August 21, 2000)

Blowup - Who can be blamed for a disaster like the Challenger explosion? No one, and we'd better get used to it. (Jan 22, 1996)

Most Likely to Succeed - How do we hire when we can't tell who's right for the job. (Dec 15, 2008)

Dangerous Minds - Criminal profiling made easy. (Nov 12, 2007)

The Talent Myth - Are smart people over-rated? (Jul 22, 2002)

Late Bloomers - Why do we equate genius with precocity? (Oct 20, 2008)

The New Boy Network - What do job interviews really tell us? (May 29, 2000)

Troublemakers - What pit bulls can teach us about crime. (Feb 6, 2006)

Blues for America

I love Kurt Vonnegut. Truth be told, I haven't read too much of his writing. Slaughterhouse Five, a while ago, then again when I taught an elective class on Vonnegut, which is when I also read Sirens of Titan. I also used a couple of his shorter stories with my 8th graders. They liked it, like I do, because he's honest and funny and brutal. I saw this link on someone's facebook, which is where I get most of anything anyway. Thanks friends.

Blues for America
Kurt Vonnegut

I don't have a really good summary for this. Read it. It isn't too long. I haven't really thought about what it means or what it means to me or what I think about it. While I read it, my brain sort of went, huh, yeah, I know what you mean, sorta. A lot of what Vonnegut writes about I haven't been through, so I can't really say that I know what he means, exactly. But I think he expresses it the way I would if I had. And when I do chance upon some overlap, I think he sums up my thoughts pretty nicely. We have a whole heck of a lot of opportunity, and for some reason, we seem determined to squander it in an effort to make the world a greedy and unhappy place. Not being terribly powerful or important, though, I don't bother to do much about it. I live my life, fight more with my family than I should, try to tell everyone I love that I love them, and figure out what things I can do that will make me smile the most often. 

In a Sunburned Country

Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors, if not my favorite. I will read pretty much anything penned by him. I have 3 on my bookshelf (among about 15 total books), several on my kindle, and a couple at my mom's house. What I love about his books is that they are non-fiction combined with wonderful storytelling. It's all the most fun things you would want to know about a topic, nicely picked out by Bryson from all his research.

In a Sunburned Country
Bill Bryson

This book is about Australia. As Bryson points out several times, most people outside of Australia don't really know that much about it. I certainly didn't really. I've met a few Australians and they were pretty nice, tan, and had a different accent than mine. That was basically my starting point. I read this book over the course of several months, so it hasn't really stuck together as a cohesive story to me, but I can recall out a few themes.

I liked the book a lot. As with all of Bryson's books, it's funny enough often enough to make me laugh out loud and get made fun of by whoever is around me while I'm reading. I figure if a book makes me laugh and teaches me something (even if I don't remember terribly well), then it is probably a pretty good thing to read.

Bryson talks a lot about the landscape and incredible vastness of Australia - it is an incomprehensibly large country that is mostly unknown and unconquered. Even when people manage to struggle through it, it often happens that they can't get back to the places they saw and visited on their way. He also talks about how remarkably diverse the flora and fauna of the country are, and that some are endangered while others still thrive in spite of changes in the environment.

Speaking of flora and fauna, Bryson spends a lot of time talking about the plants and animals of the country and how unique and often deadly they are. I got the heebie jeebies a few times and it made me think twice about wanting to go tromp about in the country and its ocean although Bryson makes pretty convincing cases for visiting. Apparently Australia is home to the most (quantity) and most (quality) deadly plants and animals on the planet. Yipes.

The rest of the book is told via Bryson's travels throughout the country, exploring the cities and landmarks that he visits and going back to retell the history and other facts. 

Word Choice Detects Everything from Love to Lies to Leadership

I've been poking around the UT website to see what goings-on are going on around campus that I can go to or get involved with, and I saw this article/news release on their news page.

Word Choice Detects Everything from Love to Lies to Leadership, According to Psychology Research
James Pennebaker

An excerpt from the article:

“Using computerized text analyses on hundreds of thousands of letters, poems, books, blogs, Tweets, conversations and other texts, it is possible to begin to read people’s hearts and minds in ways they can’t do themselves,” says Pennebaker, the Liberal Arts Foundation Centennial Professor and Psychology Department chair.  Pennebaker will publish his findings in his new book, “The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us” (Bloomsbury Press, August 2011), which is based on a large-scale research project that links natural language use to social and psychological processes.

It was pretty short, so I think to really know what he found and how it works, I will have to read the book, but I am intrigued. I like becoming more conscious and aware of what I say, how I say it, and what it means, especially as I don't think we are always terribly conscious of what we say, how we say it, and what it means, even though we are the ones saying it.

Of course,  because he mentions politics a bit, the commenters latched on to that and started throwing liberal/conservative fits (which I always find annoying). I don't really think that is terribly relevant.

A link to the book:
The Secret Life of Pronouns:What Our Words Say About Us

The Know-It-All

This is a book that I found at the teacher’s yard sale at the end of the year (so that we could lighten our loads when moving across the world) on the free table. I only had a few weeks left, but I was confident that I could squeeze in another good book.

The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
A. J. Jacobs

This is exactly my type of book. I mean, I do love fiction, comedy, romance, etc, but I do really love reading funny, non-fiction books (enter my obsession with anything penned by Bill Bryson). This is the story of an editor at Esquire who decides that he wants to read the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica. The book is organized into chapters for each letter of the alphabet. In each chapter, Jacobs has bold words as headings and the paragraphs that follow offer up anecdotes, definitions, and fun facts from the encyclopedia as well as the occasional thread of his autobiography.

I loved reading the encyclopedic things that he chose to share in addition to following along with his personal experience at the time of reading the book. I also really liked that as he read the book, Jacobs encountered several different sentences, phrases, or ideas that he found inspiring or wise. A few that I could easily retrieve and summarize, thanks to his “wisdom” entry in the index, in order as I encountered them in the book:

[My summaries in text, his words in quotes.]

A poem by John Dyer in 1699: A little rule, a little sway/a sunbeam in a winter’s day/is all the proud and mighty have/between the cradle and the grave. “On the one hand, it’s a wisely humbling poem... But on the other hand, the verse plays to my cynical side, the whatever-you-do-doesn’t-matter-because-you’ll-eventually-die side.”

“Ecclesiastes offers exactly the correct reaction to [the fact that life is desperately, insanely, absurdly unfair]. There’s nothing to be done about it, so enjoy what you can. Take pleasure in the small thing.”

Jacobs tells the story of a told to him by a lawyer friend about a Middle Eastern potentate who gathered the wise men in his kingdom to assimilate all the knowledge into a book for his sons to read and then kept sending the wise men back to write a shorter book until finally the wise men returned and gave a single sentence: This too shall pass.

Flaubert says that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing because you can’t learn the secrets to life from a textbook. 

“In his final speech, [Horace Mann] told students: ‘Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.’ Good wisdom. Great wisdom even. I have to remember that.”

Jacobs describes meeting with a rabbi to discuss some of his issues with Judaism and talks to him about scholarship in Judaism. The rabbi says that scholarship is ‘more than an ethical good… it’s a tool for survival. The emphasis on telling a story – that’s one way to express yourself Jewishly.’ When Jacobs brings up Ecclesiasted, the rabbi says that ‘we shouldn’t be focused on the competing of a task. When you’re going from A to Z, if you make it to Z, great. But if you don’t, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure.’ 

A quote from the Tolstoy entry: ‘Stiva [from Anna Karenina] though never wishing ill, wastes resources, neglects his family, and regards pleasure as the purpose of life. The figure of Stiva is perhaps designed to suggest that evil, no less than good, derives from the small moral choices human beings make moment by moment.’ 

Survival of the Sickest, chapter 1 and 2 summaries

Spoiler alert! 
I already did my little write-up/reading response for Survival of the Sickest, but I am now going to talk about some specifics. I wrote these two paragraphs after I slowly read the first two chapters, but then my parents came and I read the rest on the beach, so the summaries didn't happen. I still thought I would post them though, since they were already written. But let's be honest, if you are really interested, you should probably read the book. I am summarizing a lot of data and research that has been well explained and just giving you my exclamatory remarks in reaction to what I read. I am excited to share, but I think you should follow up by reading all about it for yourself.

Chapter 1:
First of all, hemachromatosis is a hereditary disease, the most common genetic disease for people of European descent, in which the body can't register that it has enough iron. So it continuously absorbs as much of it as possible, and this can have very, very serious side effects (including death). Iron is very important for bacteria, cancer, and other things to grow. The way this disease is most easily treated? Blood letting. Looks like all those crazy blood-letting, leech-sticking doctors weren't mistreating everyone. What is the author's argument for why this disease stuck around? To really oversimplify things: that during the black plague in Europe, people with more iron in their system were more likely to die because bacteria feeds on iron. Women, children, and the elderly were significantly less targeted than men. But people with hemachromatosis also happen to have white immune system blood cells with considerably less iron than the normal person, and this counteracted the precise way that the bubonic plague killed its victims - through their own immune system. Therefore, their immune system was actually able to fight off the bubonic plague, allowing them to live while 1/3 - 1/4 of the population died off. Even though hemachromatosis will eventually overload your system with iron, unabated, and cause you to die, it will save your life against normal infections. On the other hand, anemia has evolved because not having enough iron in your system means that it is hard for bacteria to live. While we do need iron, anemia has helped many populations avoid things like malaria.

Chapter 2:
Diabetes is much more common in people of Northern European descent and very uncommon in people of purely African, Asian, and Hispanic descent. The Younger Dryas was an ice age that occurred 13,000 years ago. After many rounds of scientific research and revision, it was discovered that the Younger Dryas took only a decade to develop and then lasted only three years. That means that one population went through a very significant (30 degree) temperature drop during their lifetime. Many Europeans died out. How does this relate to diabetes? Well, one thing that sugar does is lower the freezing temperature of water. Pure water freezes at 32 degrees, but water with other substances in it, like sugar, freeze at much colder temperatures. Our blood, being largely composed of water, then, would also freeze at a lower temperature if it had higher levels of sugar. Brown fat is a type of fat that the body produces in extremely cold temperatures that quickly burns sugar into heat. So a diabetic in Northern Europe during the Younger Dryas would have lived because their higher levels of blood sugar would have kept their blood liquid and let their brown fat burn that sugar into heat.

Languages Grew from a Seed in Africa

I saw a link to an article today on facebook about all languages being born from a single one.

Languages Grew from a Seed in Africa, a Study Says
By Nicholas Wade
New York Times, April 14, 2011

The premise of the article is to summarize the research done by Quentin D. Atkinson. His research suggests that, based on the phonemic patterns across the world, all languages evolved from one that started in Africa some 50,000 - 100,000 years ago, which coincides pretty well with the theory that all humans evolved in Africa around that time as well.

To help clarify things a bit, the definition of phoneme, courtesy of one of my favorite books (rather, the computer mac version of it), the OED:

phoneme |ˈfōnēm|noun Phoneticsany of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat. Compare with allophone .DERIVATIVESphonemic |fəˈnēmik; fō-| |foʊˈnimɪk| |fəˈnimɪk| |-ˈniːmɪk|adjectivephonemics |fəˈnēmiks; fō-| |-ˈniːmɪks| nounORIGIN late 19th cent.: from French phonème, from Greek phōnēma ‘sound, speech,’ from phōnein ‘speak.’

allophone |ˈaləˌfōn|noun Linguisticsany of the speech sounds that represent a single phoneme, such as the aspirated k in kit and the unaspirated k in skit, which are allophones of the phoneme k.DERIVATIVESallophonic |ˌaləˈfänik| |ˈøləˈfɑnɪk| |aləˈfɒnɪk| adjectiveORIGIN 1930s: from allo- [other, different] + phoneme .

As I taught my kids (students) words and word parts this past year, they started consistently pestering me for definitions and origins for many of the words that we came across. I was happy to tell them, but I only wished that I had my handy dandy OED mac application to use and project up on the wall of the classroom to always give them an accurate and satisfactory answer.

Basically, his examination of languages shows that they have less phonemes the further away from Africa on the human migration route that they are. So African languages have the most (more than 100), English has about 45, and Hawaiian has only 13. This parallels other research that shows a similar pattern of less genetic diversity in humans the further they are from Africa.

Shyness as an Evolutionary Trait

Today I saw a link on a friend's facebook profile because facebook is where I get all my news, and I found it very interesting. I think I am more of an introvert than an extravert even though I definitely have a lot of extroverted qualities.

Is Shyness an Evolutionary Trait?
Susan Cain
New York Times, June 25, 2011

The article goes to bat with the issues of social anxiety that our society currently views as being overall debilitating and less valuable than confidence in groups and social situations. The author first points out when shyness came into psychology as an issue and describes the situation now where classrooms and offices are designed with teamwork and extroversion in mind.

Cain then refers to research done on animals regarding introversion and extroversion. 15 to 20% of species are watchful and slow to act, like introverts. Animals are labeled as "sitters" or "rovers" and undergo two experiments. One involves fish and an underwater traps; the rovers get caught, while the sitters avoid it after observing this. In this situation, the sitters are the ones who live and go on to produce. In another experiment, the scientist took the same fish into the lab and put them in a new environment. Here, the rovers lived because they were quicker to adapt. Essentially, both types are valuable in the animal kingdom, of which we are a part (though it seems we often forget this fact).

Returning back to human specific research, Cain goes on to look at studies done of children and students. Various studies show that students who are introverted, but who do not have higher IQ, tend to have better test scores and a broader understanding of more subject areas. This is likely a result of their ability to focus, watch, and listen more, and also because their tendency to be introverts lends time towards these pursuits.

Some interesting personality traits that the article mentions being more prevalent in introverts: conscientiousness, empathetic, less of a desire to cheat, and other pro-social behaviors, to use Cain's term.

While it seems to us that introverts are less likely to succeed in society or the classroom or the business world, this really may not be the case. Artists, scientists, and many jobs that require focused, individual effort obviously use the skills of an introvert. As far as general employees, introverts are good at being proactive workers, thinking of ideas, as well as having good, thoughtful communication skills developed from watching and listening.

Essentially, the overall message of the article is that both personality types are valuable and useful, and society shouldn't dismiss or overmedicate one because its extremes are harmful to the individual and isn't currently the most popular behavior.

Survival of the Sickest

I picked this book up off the community bookshelf in my house and started reading it back in September or October. I passed it off to a roommate to read and then didn't get around to it again until June. I still didn't really read it until my roadtrip to Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia with my parents, at which point I annoyingly interrupted their relaxation or their own reading to blurt out facts or read aloud passages. Then I insisted that they each read it. To my the book's credit, they both found it fascinating. 

Survival of the Sickest
Dr.  Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince

It is a really interesting book because the premise is that there must be some reason why the diseases and problems that we have today exist; otherwise, why didn't our ancestors with those diseases just die out?

The chapters explore various health problems:

1. Hemachromatosis (when the body overloads on iron) and anemia
2. Diabetes
3. Cholesterol
4. Favism (most common enzyme deficiency in the world)
5. Microbes (host relationships)
6. Genes
7. Epigenetics (study of changes in gene expression not caused by DNA)
8. Cancer

Considering how scientific these subjects are and that they are being discussed from a medical and historical background, the book is quite easy and enjoyable to read. I certainly am no scientist, and I found it very approachable and interesting. I also love reading this kind of thing because it's always about something I have never considered or researched before and then I come out of the reading experience feeling like a new part of the world has been ever so slightly revealed to me. It is a great feeling to feel like I have a little bit firmer grasp on reality, and what I often find even more interesting, the human body.

As much as I would love to summarize everything I learned in this book, all I can really say is to go read it yourself. Some of the interesting things that I learned and will be taking into account in my own life (mostly copied from the book, using his own explanation to ensure that I get it right):

• When you are in the sun, your pituitary gland produces hormones that boost your melanocytes, which produce melanin (thus preventing sunburn). When you wear sunglasses, however, your optic nerve doesn't sense the extent of light around your body, so it doesn't send that message to your pituitary gland, and you get sunburn. So, I'm going to stick with my low SPF sunscreen (because I want the UV rays to process my cholesterol into Vitamin D), but I also will not wear sunglasses whenever the sun isn't really in my eyes. 
• I found out a LOT of things that I will keep in mind once I start down the reproduction track in life:
• There is a field called epigenetics, which is the study of how children can inherit and express seemingly new traits from their parents without changes in their underlying DNA.
• Maternal nutrition can permanently alter gene expression in her offspring without altering genes themselves. How? Which?
• If a newly pregnant mother spends the first weeks of her pregnancy eating a typical junk-food-laden diet, the embryo might receive signals that it's going to be born into a harsh environment where critical types of food are scarce. Through a combination of epigenetic effects, various genes are turned on and off and the baby is born small, so it needs less food to survive. So, this baby is born with a metabolism to help it survive the famine that it interprets exists from its lack of good maternal nutrition, and it grows up to be overweight because it hordes energy. 
• Shockingly, a low-protein diet within the first four days (no typo there, folks) led to sheep and rat babies prone to high blood pressure. 
• Even dads can have an effect: fathers who smoked before puberty had sons who were significantly fatter than normal; this may be a result of something similar to the poor nutrition from the mother: the toxins suggest a difficult environment, so the baby is born ready to hoard energy.
• A woman gets her full set of eggs while she is a fetus in her mother's womb. This means that the epigenetic signals sent from your grandmother to your mother are also passed onto the eggs that provide half of your DNA.
• In a study of rats (okay, not humans, but still applicable enough for me to go for it), rats that received different levels of attention in the first few hours after birth grew up to have significantly different stress/confidence levels. Pups that were gently licked by their mothers grew into confidence rat babies that were relatively relaxed and could handle stressful situations. Rats that were ignored by their mothers grew up to be nervous wrecks. To the suspicious: they did a blind study where they switched biological rat pups with their mothers, and regardless of their genes/methyl markers, the rats that were licked and attended to were also relaxed while the others grew up to be stressed. I'm going to insist that I get my baby right away and shower on some affectionate physical loving.
• Based on the skeletal adaptations that allow us humans to walk on two feet, there is reason to believe that we developed in a semi-aquatic environment: water helps support our weight, it would encourage us to lose our hair, it would encourage us to attach fat to our skin like other water mammals, and it would help us give birth after we changed our skeletal structure. Giving birth as a human is not a fun experience, or so I have heard. Nothing fits well, the baby's head is bigger than the pelvic opening, and the birth canal is all twisted. All other animals give birth to their young on their own; we can't. Giving birth in water, however, really helps the birthing process. Studies have shown that it is at least as safe as conventional methods and may even have some remarkable advantages.
• No increase in infection in either mothers or newborns
• May be additional protection for newborns against pneumonia. Babies don't gasp for air until they feel air on their face; when they're underwater, they hold their breath. This allows their faces to be cleaned underwater of all the fecal matter/birthing residue that doctors must conventionally wipe off as they are breathing in their first breaths. 
• First time mothers had a much shorter first stage of labor.
• Women delivering in water had a dramatic reduction in the need for episiotomies (surgical cut routinely performed in hospital births to expand a woman's vaginal opening in order to prevent complications from tearing). Most of the time they weren't necessary because the water allowed for more of a stretch.
• Only 5% of women starting labor in water asked for an epidural, compared to 66% of conventional births. 

Okay, so that was quite long. But really, I found this whole book absolutely fascinating. And I'm definitely going to be aware of this book when I start trying to have kids: eat really well-rounded meals, have a water birth, and be physically affectionate as soon as possible. 

hello!

Having just finished my year as an English teacher and missing my years as a student taking English classes, I am very much in the mood to write about what I read. In fact, I find it very difficult to read anything and not want to talk about it with others, share what I have learned, comment on what I thought, and hear their response. Although I am ready to admit that many may not be interested, I find it an enjoyable part of the reading process. If for no other audience than myself and having a venue for my thoughts and reflections, I decided to make a blog solely devoted to things I read and what I have to say in response.