Tag: 2026

Selfish Gene

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Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Reason read: every January people make resolutions all about bettering themselves. It’s all about them. In honor of those “it’s all about me” resolutions I am reading a book about being selfish and the explanation for why.

Richard Dawkins wants you to ignore the word selfish in his book’s title and concentrate more on the word gene. He confessed that “misunderstandings of Darwinism” are what originally “provoked” him to write The Selfish Gene. [Point of view: At the time of publication he was a professor at Oxford University and considered The Selfish Gene a “new” way of looking at ourselves. Keep in mind Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene fifty years ago.] Like a chef laying out a beautifully set table before his meal, Dawkins takes care to define the words selfish and altruistic. He wants to make sure you are grounded in the facts he is about to present before you. He is careful to explain how words get lost in translation. For example, take the Septuagint – Hebrew for young woman into Greek for virgin and what transpires is the virgin giving birth to a holy son.
Dawkins repeatedly uses the word “simplified” to assure his readers that he has dumbed down his scientific subject matter as much as he could without turning The Selfish Gene into a See Jane Run book for toddlers. He uses humor and folksy language to further put his reader at ease. Fear not! This is a good book.

Quote to quote, “For instance a ion wants to eat an antelope’s body, but the antelope has very different plans for its body” (p 89).

Author fact: Dawkins published seven books after The Selfish Gene. I am reading one more, The Blind Watchmaker. At the time of publication, Dawkins was working on the computer simulation of cricket song to determine the basis of female attraction.

Book trivia: as an aside, Dawkins tells a story about the underground “parasol” ants of South America. They live in colonies of over two million and live deep underground.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Genuine Genes” (p 96).

Chequer Board

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Shute, Nevil. The Chequer Board. William Morrow & Company, 1947.

Reason read: Shute celebrates a birthday in January.

John Turner has been having attacks of giddiness and fainting spells. As a veteran of World War II he lives with inoperable shrapnel in his head. The story opens with him learning he has maybe a year to live because of this horrific wound. There is nothing the doctors can do. This abbreviated time on earth has prompted John to want to reconnect with three men he met in military hospital: Philip Morgan, a soldier prisoned in Burma during the war; Pfc Dave Lesurier, a soldier accused of attempted rape of a naive English girl; and Corporal Duggie Brent, a soldier who had killed a man during a bar fight. What had happened to these troubled men? Turner wants to find them and improve their lives if he can.
A side story is John’s relationship with his wife. His marriage to Mollie has strained for normalcy. From the very beginning the reader learns that Mollie did not visit Turner in the hospital; not even once despite the fact he was there for a week. She claims he hasn’t needed he. Neither has done anything kind for the other. A death sentence changes both of them. As a way of understanding Mollie urges John to find his former friends from the hospital.

Shute has a funny way of describing things. [She was] “about to produce an infant” (p 29) instead of saying she was pregnant once a year.

Quote to quote, “He like to drive for an hour to some country pub or roadhouse and drink beer in an atmosphere of smoke and laughter and good company” (p 31). That sounds like an amazing time. Can I come, too? Here is another, “Rather than fall into their hands, it was preferable to fall into the hands of death” (p 100).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Nevil Shute: Too Good To Miss” (p 198). Pearl warns her readers that there would be racist language in The Chequer Board. I expected the derogatory name calling but not the all out blatant racism. Even in the twenty-first century, there is a lot of that going around. With the death of Rob Reiner there is a resurgence of people watching “All in the Family.” The character of Archie Bunker is not exactly all that politically correct. Those were the prejudices of the time and somehow acceptable.

Three Doors To Death

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Stout, Rex. Three Doors to Death: a Nero Wolfe Threesome. Viking Press, 1949.

Reason read: I first started the series fifteen books ago in honor of Rex Stout’s birth month.

Man Alive (published in December 1947) – A man once thought to be dead of suicide is found dead again.
Omit Flowers (published in November 1948) – as a favor to a friend, Nero Wolfe takes on the wrongful accusation of murder. Virgil Pompa, a restaurant chain manager has been fingered for the crime.
Door to Death (published in June 1949) – my favorite of the bunch. Nero’s caretaker of over 10,000 orchids, Theodore Horstmann, has taken leave indefinitely to care for his ailing mother. This abandonment is absolutely unacceptable to Wolfe. The travesty forces him to leave his beloved brownstone to recruit a replacement who has, of course, been charged with murder.

As an aside, for as many times as Archie says Nero never leaves his brownstone, I wonder if someone has actually counted up all the times he has and why.

Author fact: Stout passed away at the age of eighty-eight.

Book trivia: to track Stout’s publications one has to be pretty savvy. Three Doors to Death is comprised of three novellas which were published as stand alone stories. The three stories were republished in a collection called Five of a Kind.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).

Reinvention Playbook

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Wozniak, Bruno. The Reinvention Playbook: Self Published, 2025.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review program from LibraryThing every once in awhile I get to read interesting books.

In a nutshell, The Reinvention Playbook is about navigating the loss of a job and all that that end entails. It is about rebuilding a new identity outside of what the job made you. Is it possible to find meaningful employment and emotional connection after ending a self-defining career? Wozniak urges his readers to try, try, try. It is all about moving forward, one baby step at a time. At times I found the advice to be a little repetitious with emotional signatures: disorientation, low energy, aligned with the adverse of curiosity and confidence.
I appreciated his phrase “identity earthquake” for when a job ends, it truly is a restructuring of everything you knew about yourself. Think about it. You spend a solid eight hours a day as one entity. That is a good chunk of time. Routines are established; a rhythm solidified. You need to reconcile the inside voice with the outside noise. Do not let the fear of urgency create chaos before you have had a chance to heal. You have to let go of who you were before you lost the job and take note of what remains after the work is gone. The diagnostics are sometimes hard to decipher if you do not know how to read the emotional cues or cannot resist the urge to stay busy. Wozniak’s book enables you to navigate those efforts to rebuild.

Author fact: I instantly connected with Wozniak’s example of running. Without the analytics to “prove” the effort, is it worth it? Can you go for a run without tracking pace, distance, heart rate, route?

Book trivia: The Reinvention Playbook is best read after losing employment as a tool for grounding yourself in reality, but what happens if you read the book with one eye on the approaching cliff you just know you are going to fall from? Would you read the book differently if you were secure in your employment or foresaw no immediate danger?

Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux

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Long, David. The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux. Scribner, 2000.

Reason read: Sisters Week is in January.

The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux has been described as the “effect of not knowing on a tragedy’s survivor.” I lost a friend two years ago (it’ll be three at the end of June) and I have absolutely no clue what happened. Was it suicide? Possibly. He mentioned ideation more than enough times. Was it an accidental overdose? Possibly. He admitted he was addicted to pain killers. Was it the damage from the near-fatal stroke he had? Possibly. He was still struggling with his health. But. I will never know.
Hartford, Connecticut (1973). Miles Fanning and Caroline (Carly) Lamoreaux are typical teenagers, skipping out on choir practice for the sake of young love. Only Carly does not meet Miles at the prescribed spot nor is she ever heard from again. Fast forward twenty-four years later Fanning is the founder of SunBreak Records and still does not know what happened to his old girlfriend all those years ago. He has since married and moved to Seattle, Washington. In all honesty he hasn’t thought about Carly all that much. Life has carried him in a different direction…until suddenly Carly’s sister, Julia, sweeps into his life, dragging the memory and mystery of Carly behind her. Julia’s line of questioning is off-putting and abrasive; the way your teeth feel when you bite down on eggshells in an otherwise fluffy omelet or finding sand in your ice cream. Julia interrogates Fanning like his soul has committed a serious crime. She is a strange woman to whom Fanning cannot help but be drawn. What I found so interesting about The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux was the lack of detail about the investigation into the disappearance of Carly Lamoreaux. Miles Fanning is an obvious suspect but once he is cleared, the reader does not get a sense of urgency to find Carly. It led me to think more about the title. The focus is on the father, Simon. Does he hold the key to the mystery? In the end I found myself saying, yes, he does.

Author fact: Long also wrote The Falling Boy which is on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: this should be a movie.

Real music: Count Basie, Te Deum, Kodaly’s Psalmus Hungaricus, Keith Jarrett’s Koln concert, Soundgarden, Chopin, and Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedies.

Fake music: Billy Caughan’s “Hard Knock Turn,” and Nella Randolph,

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Sibs” (p 199).

Something Else

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Simko, Lukas. Something Else: Words that Remember, Stories that Awaken. Independent Publicist, 2025.

Reason read: as part of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I get to read books that sometimes move me. This is one of those books.

The fastest review I could write about Something Else is to say it is a memoir about an individual wanting to find true love. Lukas Simko’s story begins when he is a thirty-two year old graduate looking for work. He meets a girl who over time showed all the classic signs of an abuser. She was controlling and manipulative and I found myself wishing he would have seen the signs earlier. Right away I felt Simko is someone who has the potential to fall hard and fast for a romantic relationship. He believes in taking chances and embracing adventure wherever it may take him.
Then there was Macy. She was clear she did not an emotional relationship, but Lukas started to like her more and more “without permission.” Interesting choice of words. This time around Simko noticed the signs of a relationship dying as Macy started to distance herself from him.
Next came Jaya. Lukas felt an instant connection with her for they had a great deal in common and almost seemed to be soul mates. She even took him in as a roommate without really knowing him. Once again Lukas became involved with a woman who did not want to be tied down with anything emotional. To say Jaya was complicated is an understatement. She often sent mixed signals and seemed to be confused about what she really wanted from Simko. One minute she was communicating as if she cared deeply; the next she felt it necessary to block Simko on social media (twice).
In the end, Simko emerged a stronger person. He was able to see the beauty in each failed relationship. As an aside, I think of it as the particle theory. You get what you need from each relationship whether that relationship withstands the test of time or not.

Confessional: I did not understand Ireland’s employment situation. Lukas requested three weeks off under the guise of taking care of a grandmother. Instead, he was rewarded with 3 1/2 months off, but the kicker was he had to go on leave when they told him to. I thought he was working in a remote IT position.
A more personal confessional: Simko went four months without talking to Jaya. Try five years! That’s how long I went without speaking to someone who meant the world to me.

As an aside, I learned a new word, “craic.”

Music: “Misty Mountains” by Leyna Robinson-Stone.

Long Marriage

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Kumin, Maxine. The Long Marriage. W.W. Norton and Company, 2002.

Reason read: I read somewhere that January 26th is Marriage Day.

In The Long Marriage Maxine Kumin is keen to describe what she sees in the viewfinder of life. She stares down uncomfortable topics like suicide and crime with unflinching clarity. From the community of Grays Point to gardening to the struggle of rehabilitation after an accident. She even reflects on her own injuries from being thrown from a horse: punctured lung, eleven broken ribs, and a bruised liver…just to name a few. Her poems are life jumping off the page and, dare I say, into your heart.
Poems I enjoyed the most:

  • Skinny dipping with William Wordsworth – remembering her days as a Radcliffe student, studying Wordsworth. She paints a picture of a passionate youth and the aftermath of a romance long cooled by time and war.
  • Thinking of Gorki While Clearing a Trail – Who is Saturnine Gorki? 1929 International Congress of Atheists.
  • Imagining Marianne Moore in the Butterfly Garden – another beautiful tribute.
  • Capital Punishment – why are we allowed to see gruesome mutilations (the victims of Sierra Leone) and yet spared the benign execution of Benny Demps?
  • Rilke Revisited – another ode to a great writer.
  • Why There Will Always Be Thistle – I need to read this to my husband. He can’t stand thistles.
  • Pantoum, with Sawn – ode to Helen of Troy
  • Calling out of Gray’s Point – charming poem about Purvis, the phone repair man who has been trying to fix the line.
  • The Exchange – line I liked the best: “the neophyte animal psychic who visits my barn at midday”…okay.
  • Highway Hypothesis – imagining the neighbors.
  • Game of Nettles – confessional: while Kumin is remembering a childhood game of playing with nettles, I have a darker reminiscing. I can remember being five or six years and being whipped with nettles by the much older boys. Oh how they laughed.

Author fact: Maxine Kumin was friends with Anne Sexton.

Book trivia: there is a beautiful picture of the author and her husband and their dogs. Kumin’s dedication to Victor, “on the dark lake” is beautiful, too.

Natalie connections: In Miss Merchant’s song, “Sister Tilly” she talks about the kind of woman who reads Rilke poems. Kumin has a poem about Rilke.
Natalie was the first person to introduce me to the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Kumin quotes him in The Long Marriage.

Confessional: Peter Gabriel celebrated the album So by doing an anniversary tour. I could not think of the poet to whom he dedicated “—.” All I could remember was the line, “Anne with her father is out in the boat.” Kumin mentions Anne Sexton by name. Mystery solved…although I could have just looked at the liner notes.

Music: Pee Wee Russell, Jack Teagarden, Erroll Garner, and Glenn Miller.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Prose by Poets” (p 194).