What are you reading these days?

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez

I just finished this and give it an enthusiastic recommendation. The main focus of the book is in using data to root out systemic biases that disproportionately impact women. The book jumps between identifying many instances of this, and also identifying areas where there is a "data gap", where any potential disproportionate harm can't be identified because we cannot disaggregate the data based on sex or gender.

The book was really eye-opening, as it highlighted a lot of hidden or behind-the-scenes decisions that we don't really think about. One thing that stuck with me, for example, was that the US did not use crash test dummies based on female bodies for measuring car safety until 2011(!!!). The previous dummies used were based on a 50th percentile male body. When they started using female dummies, it revealed how the, at face value, "gender-neutral" safety ratings for cars misrepresented their safety as it applied to women:

Even with all these gaps, the 2011 introduction of the female crash-test dummy in the US still sent cars’ star ratings plummeting. The Washington Post reported on the experience of Beth Milito and her husband, who bought a 2011 Toyota Sienna, based primarily on its four-star safety rating. But all was not as it seemed. The passenger seat, which Milito says she is likely to be sitting in when they are ‘out and about as a family’, had a two-star rating. In the previous year’s model, the front passenger seat (tested on a male dummy) had earned a top five-star rating. But the shift to female dummies revealed that in a front collision at 35 mph a female passenger had a 20-40% risk of being killed or seriously injured. The average risk of death for that class of vehicle, explains the Washington Post, is 15%.

There is a lot more in the book, and it's honestly the kind of book that doesn't do well in summary, as there are lot of individual little threads that connect together into a much larger web. I highly recommend it to anyone that's interested in the topic.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It's really drawn me in so far. His writing in this one is unlike anything I've experienced before. If you can stomach the grizzly violence, I'd recommend it.

I have just started The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett. I've had a copy since release day and I only just feel ready to read the final Discworld book. I grew up reading and re-reading the books obsessively, Pratchett is my ultimate safe place, every time it takes me right back to reading under the bed covers with a torch so my parents wouldn't come past and see the light (looking back I doubt they cared because why would they want to stop me reading). I never understood why people got upset by celebrity deaths until Pratchett died. I only met him once but through his writing he is part of my family in a fundamental, intimate way.

I'm literally five pages in. It feels different somehow and that might be me, it might be him, might be a bit of both. He knew he was dying while writing this book, so I'm not expecting it to be an entirely jolly experience but if there's anyone who can make their final goodbye glorious and wonderful,it's Terry Pratchett.

My wife, although I didn't meet her until we were in our twenties, was doing the very same thing as me as a kid. We rarely read the same books, and when we do it's usually some time apart - but through some amount of effort we managed to synchronise our reading lists and we're reading this one at the same time.

The Heart of Buddha's Teaching, by Thich Nhat Hanh. Most of his books are very practical, with lessons and direct instructions on how to face the challenges of daily life. This book is a bit more technical, since the idea is to give a primer on the main tenets of Buddhism. Like everything he does, the language is soft, accessible, and comforting. Nevertheless, sometimes I feel that I should be taking notes, studying instead of just reading. But I don't wanna be a monk, so I'm okay if I forget the minutiae. The core will remain. Like everything by Thich, just by reading his words I feel instantly at peace. His message is not one of selfish distancing from the world's affairs, but rather a loving and progressive form of commitment to the betterment of humankind. He's an activist monk, and his words emanate love.

I finally finished Braiding Sweetgrass. It was lovely and gave me a lot to think about, especially around gratitude in the modern western world.

I also read Outlawed in a single day and absolutely loved it! Fun, short, quick fiction read about barrenness and being outcast in the 1800s. There were also lots of old medicine references that I enjoyed.

Set Your Voice Free by Roger Love. The book teaches you how to have a clearer, better sounding voice for both speaking and singing. It's such a great book. Idk if its totally correlated but last night i was making an effort to speak 'properly' with my tinder date and it went really well!

I've just finished reading the 'The Dark is Rising' sequence.

This has been a long time coming. I've always had vague memories of a story I read as a child, which focussed on a boy trying to find objects with a "cross in a circle" design for some magical quest - but I could never remember what it was. Finally, it bugged me so much that I asked people what the book was. Then, earlier this year, I stumbled across a box set of the books, and I had a few dollars to spare, so I bought it.

And I've just finished reading them.

As context: I don't remember whether I liked this series or not as a child. I only remember some facts about the story. As a youngster, I was a voracious reader (I pretty much always had a book in my hand - I was known as the kid who nearly got run over while walking to school because I was reading while crossing the street!), and I wasn't very discriminating. So, I've read this series as an adult out of curiosity, rather than nostalgia or fondness.

It was okay...

I liked the use of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic legends to create a fantasy tale. Notably, King Arthur is portrayed as a god-like figure in the background of events, with Merlyn taking a more active role.

The series was a bit slow-paced for my liking.

There was a convoluted narrative device to have a son of King Arthur living in the current day.

The series felt best when it was focussing on the children at the centre of the quests. I particularly liked the character Jane, who was the only girl in the group.

The only serious negative was a pointless diversion which took up nearly a third of the final book. Until then, the children had been conducting their quests in modern-day England and Wales (well, "modern-day" in the sense that the books were written in the 1970s so the series is set in the 1970s). However, partway through the final book, two of the children go off on a quest into a mystical "Lost Land". Nothing in this Lost Land has any connection to the rest of the series. Their only goal is to get a magical sword. Everything else and everyone else they meet in this land is irrelevant. All the other magical "Things of Power" that the children had to collect were either hidden in England or Wales. This was different: these two boys went to a whole different place, and it felt disconnected from everything else. I almost felt like the author was getting paid by the word, so she inserted a few thousand extra words just for the sake of it. She could have had the children find the sword some other way.

On the whole, I enjoyed the series. It's not my Top Ten, but it's a pleasant relaxing read (and if I re-read it, I'll skip the middle section of the final book). Maybe children would like it more than this jaded old man.

About to start Starsight by Brandon Sanderson before book 3 of Skyward comes out. He's my favorite modern author and I've read all of his Cosmere novels so far so read Skyward a few months ago.