2024 superlatives

Other year-end literary lists focus on the year's best. I favor other superlatives. This year I am adding a new category: most fun. And remember, these are just books I read this year, not those published this year.

Most Enchanting Book: Reading Leif Enger's Peace Like a River makes a person believe in miracles.

Most Important Book: Published a number of years ago, David McCullough's The Great Bridge, about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, still seems important for what it teaches us about how big ideas become reality.

Most Daunting Book: What I found daunting about Sy Montgomery's The Soul of the Octopus was the subject matter. Each of an octopus's eight tentacles has its own brain and its own personality. Staggering.

Wisest Book: Who would have suspected that a book about a famous madam could explain so much about what was going on in the United States between the wars? But Debby Applegate's Madam, about Polly Adler, does just that.

Most Familiar Book: The Funny Stuff is a collection of highlights from the work of P..J. O'Rourke. Even those excerpts I had not read before seemed familiar because of O'Rourke's distinctive wit.

Most Incomprehensible Book: In The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy, Arik Kershenbaum attempts to predict what creatures on other planets, if they exist, might look like. Huh?

Most Beautiful Book: William Kent Krueger's The River We Remember may be a mystery, but it is a beautifully written  mystery.

Most Fearless Book: In The Power of Eight, Lynne McTaggert takes a scientific approach to prayer. A small group of people praying for the same thing at the same time brings amazing results, she says. What takes bravery is not so much writing the book or reading the book as acting on what it says.

Most Surprising Book: I didn't expect Elizabeth McKenzie's The Dog of the North to be as much fun as Charles Portis's The Dog of the South. But it is.

Most Unpleasant Book: I love Patrick deWitt's other novels, but Ablutions describes some of the very worst human behavior, and I found it disgusting.

Most Luminous Book: Olaf Olafsson's beautiful novel Touch tells of an Icelandic man who fell in love with a Japanese girl in his youth. Now retired and widowed, and in the midst of a pandemic, he flies to Japan to try to find her.

Most Fun Book: All of Richard Russo's Fool novels are fun to read, but Somebody's Fool, the last in the trilogy, puts the icing on the cake.

A full life

The novel written about the life of Dita Kraus was called The Librarian of Auschwitz. Kraus tells her own story in her 2020 autobiography A Delayed Life.

Written when she was 89, her book covers her entire life and does not dwell on her time in Auschwitz or her experiences in Nazi labor camps. She deals with her experiences as the extermination camp's librarian in just a few sentences. There were only about a dozen books that Jewish prisoners had brought with them and were left behind after their deaths. Only 14 years old at the time, she was briefly put in charge of them.

Kraus writes about the deaths of her parents, the starvation diet she and other prisoners endured and the work she was forced to do to stay alive. She survived only by lying about her age, saying she was a year older than she actually was. A teenage girl at the time, she seems to remember more about the boys she liked than the horrors of camp life.

Most of the book deals with her life after the war, first as a translator for British soldiers, then as a wife and mother and settler in the new state of Israel. Her description of life in a kibbutz is particularly interesting. She tells about the kibbutz raising pigs, not caring about Jewish dietary laws, while residents were disciplined if they used the name of Jesus when they swore. There were no marriages. Couples simply declared that they wanted to live together.

In the end, Dita Kraus looks back on a full and rewarding life, even if it was delayed by that horrible experience as a prisoner of the Nazis when she was apparently doomed to an early death.

A Game for Readers (2024 edition)

Each year at about this time I try to answer the same 12 questions with the titles of books read that year. It's a game anyone who reads a lot of books can play. If you do play, please comment with your own answers. Here are mine:

Describe yourself: Somebody's Fool

How do you feel: Touch (literally)

Describe where you currently live: The Old Place

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Two Nights in Lisbon

Your favorite form of transportation: Hitchhiker

Your best friend is: Hid from Our Eyes

You and your friends are: The Messy Lives of Book People

What is the weather like where you are: A New Day in the City

What is the best advice you could give: Doesn't Hurt to Ask

Thought for the day: I Shall Not Want

How would you like to die: Every Man Dies Alone

What is your soul's present condition: Peace Like a River

Alien abduction can be fun

Light-hearted sci-fi novels are not that common, so we should be grateful for Connie Willis. Her The Road to Roswell (2024) is, like Crosstalk, a comic gem.

Francie goes to Roswell, N.M., to be maid of honor at her former college roommate's wedding, although her real objective is to try to talk Serena out of marrying a UFO kook. Yet no sooner does she get to Roswell than she is snatched by an actual space alien who looks like sagebrush with multiple octopus-like tentacles.

Her fears subside as she begins to realize the alien does not want to harm her but rather needs her help. Before long four others are abducted by Indy, the name given to the alien because he uses those tentacles like Indiana Jones uses his whip.

Indy learns English by watching western movies, leading to many hilarious conversations. One of his favorite expressions becomes, "MIGHTY GRATEFUL MA'AM." Indy's mission is to find a missing friend, but he feels so bad about Francie missing the wedding that he insists on going to a Las Vegas wedding chapel so that she can marry Wade, one of the men he has abducted. He seems to know before either Wade or Francie that they are in love.

Indy and his human crew are chased through the West by both the FBI and other aliens. This may not be classic science fiction, but it is all outrageous fun. 

Hard on books

First edition

Why are first editions of classic children's books in good condition relatively hard to find? Simply because children are hard on books, especially the books they love.

Very small children even chew on books. So do their pets. Children want their parents to read the same favorite stories over and over again at bedtime. They like to carry these books with them and take them places, even outside when they play. Before they learn to read, they enjoy sitting down with these books to look at the illustrations and relive the stories in their minds.

Like teddy bears and favorite dolls and toys of any kind, few favorite books survive childhood in good shape. They may eventually get tossed. If kept, they may become prized possessions to their original owners, yet they may not be prized by collectors looking for something more pristine.

It is probably true that any book, whether written for children or adults, that remains in a condition loved by collectors was never truly loved by its original owner.

Written in scars

In America, a man could become what he dreamed; in India, dreaming could undo a man.

Thrity Umrigar, The Museum of Failures

In Thirty Umrigar's wonderful 2023 novel The Museum of Failures, Remy's loving father raised him to escape India, move to America and make his dreams come true there. To a great extent, that is exactly what happens. At Ohio State, Remy meets Kathy, an American beauty, and marries her. Then he becomes very successful in business. Yet he had actually wanted to write poetry, and his and Kathy's dream of having a baby proved impossible. Perhaps his dreams could come true in India after all.

Remy returns to India alone when he learns of a young woman with an inconvenient pregnancy. She has agreed to let Remy and Kathy adopt her baby.

In Bombay, however, Remy discovers his mother, Shirin, in a hospital bed, unable or unwilling to eat or speak. His relationship with his mother has always been difficult. His late father had been the loving one, while his mother had always been distant, critical and sometimes cruel.

Yet his presence in her hospital room seems to revive Shirin, and slowly she begins to recover, even as his adoption plans run into difficulties. Remy's feelings toward his mother gradually change, especially when he discovers a long hidden family secret that causes him to rethink his attitude toward both of his parents. His family turns out to be very different than what he had assumed.

Late in her novel, Umrigar, who like her main character is a transplant from India to Ohio, writes that "everybody's story was written in scars." That is certainly true in The Museum of Failures.

A pleasant old age

I cannot imagine a pleasanter old age than one spent in the not too remote country where I could reread and annotate my favorite books.

Andre Maurois, French author

Andre Maurois

I once met a man in his 90s — and wrote a newspaper column about him — whose life was pretty much what Andre Maurois describes above. Once a chemist, if I remember correctly, he now spent his days reading, not in a comfortable easy chair but sitting at his kitchen table. He mostly reread old favorites. He was reading Thackery when I met him and he became my friend. He lived in a small house full of books in a very small town, which might even be described as a "not too remote country."

I am too rapidly approaching that age now, and his life seems pleasant to me.

Most very old people seem to spend most of their waking hours watching television. That's what both of my parents did in their 90s. I am prepared for that kind of life, as well, for I have a large collection of DVDs, both favorite movies and television shows. I could happily watch them all again and again.

Yet reading sounds even more pleasant to me, for as long as I can focus my mind, make out the print and make notes on index cards about what I read.

Staying decent

Novelist Hans Fallada witnessed Nazi Germany firsthand. Although sometimes a critic of Hitler, he somehow survived, and after World War II he wrote his greatest novel, Every Man Dies Alone (1947). The novel gives a striking picture what it was like being a decent German in an indecent time.

At the novel's center are a middle-aged couple, Otto and Anna Quangel, who are lukewarm supporters of Hitler until their son is killed in combat. Then their attitude changes. Open rebellion, or even criticism, is impossible, so Otto, a foreman at his factory, hits upon the idea of writing anti-Nazi messages on postcards and carefully placing them around the city. Anna joins him in his effort, bringing the two of them closer together than they have been in years. They are united in their cause, a cause that seems doomed from the start and could cost them their lives.

The postcards have little impact. Most of them are turned over to the Gestapo immediately, and the search for the perpetrator becomes a high priority. The length of the hunt jeopardizes the careers and even the lives of those in charge. One guard, after the Quangels are arrested, is dismissed as being unsuitable, "too human to do duty here."

The novel is long, full of many characters and details, yet it rarely ceases to be riveting. And Fallada's ultimate message comes through clearly: Even when the situation seems hopeless, there remains something to be said for staying decent.

Other benefits of reading

Books relieve me from idleness, rescue me from company, blunt the edge of my grief. They are the comfort and solitude of my old age.

Montaigne

Montaigne

Montaigne reminds us that reading serves many purposes, and he doesn't even mention what are probably the two main ones: informing us and entertaining us. Let's look at his points one by one:

Relief from idleness — It is very easy to turn on the TV even when there is nothing on that we particularly want to watch or to play a game on our phone or computer. This is how so many of us spend our idle hours, myself included. We think of these activities as relief from work and worry, yet sometimes we need relief even from this kind of relief. Reading gets our minds working again while our tired bodies are at rest.

Rescue from company — Montaigne must have had more courage than I possess. When I have a guest who hangs around too long, I may think about picking up a book, but I refrain. I prefer more subtle hints.

Blunt grief — After my wife died, I had trouble doing any reading at all. Yet eventually I did find Montaigne's point to be true. My books provided distraction when distraction was what i needed.

Comfort in old age — When one is retired and alone, reading does provide comfort. A book can be like a companion one can hold in one's hands. It can help pass the time. It can involve one in the lives of others, even if those others are fictional or dead people from history.

Saving the future czar

Will Thomas blends history and fiction nicely in his 2021 Victorian mystery Dance with Death.

It is 1893 and Nicholas, the heir of Russia's throne, comes to London for a royal wedding. Enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn are hired to protect him from a suspected assassination attempt. The assignment is not easy to carry out in part because Scotland Yard and the future czar's own bodyguards, except for the one who hires the duo, are confident they can do the job without their help. Another complication is that Nicholas is a foolish young man, more interested in sneaking away to see his mistress than in his own safety.

Nicholas is just one of a number of real historical personages in this story. Others include Eleanor Marx, Karl's daughter, and Prince George of Greece and Denmark.

Barker and Llewelyn come to believe that the assassin may be a woman. What's more, she is a woman with a history with Llewelyn before his happy marriage to the beautiful widow, Rebecca. Will that marriage remain happy after all secrets are revealed?

Thomas gives his readers vivid characters, suspense, drama and plenty of action. Who could ask for more?

Finding a way

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is said to have made a practice of reading while walking through the streets of London, his book so close to his face that he was virtually blind. He usually just shuffled along slowly to prevent tripping and collisions.

This brings back memories of a week spent vacationing in Bemus Point, N.Y., when I read most of a Robert Parker novel while walking down a lakeside road on the outskirts of town. The road had little traffic, and I was able to stay on the brim while still focusing on the fast-moving detective story. I lived to tell about it.

When you enjoy reading, you find ways to read even while doing something else. When technology finally made it possible for you to listen to a book being read to you while you drove a car, fixed dinner or worked at a jigsaw puzzle, it proved a revolutionary development for many of us. And it was certainly safer than reading a book while walking along a road or a sidewalk.

I am looking at some humorous old drawings of women who are as dedicated to their reading as they are to their housework. One shows a woman on her knees mopping a floor while pushing a wheeled contrivance that includes both a bucket of water and an open book in front of her face. Another shows a Victorian woman washing dishes with a book mounted in front of her, strapped to her upper body.

Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. For some of us, reading is a necessity. We will find a way.

The mystery of owls

All birds are mysterious creatures because of their songs, their migratory habits and their ability to fly, but none may be more mysterious than owls. Jennifer Ackerman probes that mystery in What an Owl Knows (2023).

Owls have been difficult to study because most of them are active only at night. During the day they sit stationary, camouflaged by their feathers. Even experts have difficulty spotting them and finding their nests. One surprising solution to this problem is to train dogs to detect the odor of the pellets disgorged by owls. The pellets are composed of the bones and other indigestible matter in the prey they swallow.

Here are some other amazing facts about owls that Ackerman tells us about:

• There are at least 260 species of owls.

• Some owls hoot while still in their egg.

• Not all owls hoot in the manner usually associated with owls. The author tells of one species whose call sounds like a ringing telephone.

• Snowy owls migrate north, not south, for the winter.

• In some species of owls, only the females migrate. The males stay put in order to claim the best nesting sites when the females return.

• Some captive owls must pass "mouse school" before they can be released. They are even given a final exam in which they must demonstrate an ability to capture living mice.

Ackerman, the author of The Genius of Birds, traveled the world to encounter many kinds of owls, and she talked with many of those who have devoted their lives to the study of owls. She tells us a lot about these creatures, the only birds whose eyes face forward, yet the mystery remains.

Leaky boats

The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyway.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

I like the fact that bad books exist. It means that someone had the freedom to write them and get them published. And someone else had the freedom to read them if they wanted to. Of course, one person's bad book can be another person's good book. 

The campaign against misinformation by the Biden administration during the Covid years demonstrated the wisdom of allowing free expression. Much of that "misinformation" turned out to be the truth. Much of what the experts said about Covid turned out to be mistaken. It other words, the proclaimed truth was too often the actual misinformation.

To use the analogy of Oliver Wendell Holmes. the truth eventually seeped into that leaky boat.

Many published books are hogwash. These may include political books on both sides of the spectrum, diet books that don't work. history books that get the facts wrong or the interpretations wrong, and so on. As long as someone else is free to write other books expressing a different point of view or presenting a different set of facts, wisdom will eventually get in.

Jeeves comes through again

P.G. Wodehouse's Right Ho, Jeeves, first published in serial form in 1933 and 1934 in the Saturday Evening Post, was just the second of his Jeeves novels, yet already the pattern these novels follow was established. This has everything to do with the short stories Wodehouse wrote in which he was able to refine his main characters, the hapless Bertie Wooster and his unusually wise manservant.

It may just be the second novel, but already Bertie has decided that Jeeves is past his prime. And so when his old pal Gussie Fink-Nottle needs help popping the question to Madeline Bassett, Bertie decides this is a job he must tackle himself. And then Bertie is summoned by Aunt Dahlia because her daughter's engagement to Tuppy Glossop, another pal, is on the rocks. Of course, Aunt Dahlia really wants Jeeves, not Bertie, to resolve the crisis, but again Bertie believes he is the right man for the job.

Of course, things go from bad to worse until Jeeves is finally called in to save the day. Bertie admits he needs help only when he unexpectedly finds himself engaged to Madeline and a drunken Gussie proposes to the wrong girl.

This novel doesn't have as many funny lines as a typical Wodehouse adventure, yet the humor is all there as always, just not as quotable. Jeeves's final solution to all problems, not just the romantic ones, involves having Bertie pointlessly ride 18 miles on a bicycle in the middle of the night. How can Bertie's midnight ride possibly solve all problems? Only Jeeves — and, of course, P.G. Wodehouse — could imagine it. But we can all enjoy it.

Kinds of readers

Books can be an interest, a hobby, a passion or a compulsion. Of course, to many people, perhaps most people, they can also be irrelevant.

Thomas Wolfe

I was reading about the novelist Thomas Wolfe, who according to Lawrence C. Powell, "read (books) insanely, by the hundreds, the thousands, the ten thousands." Powell describes "a ravening appetite in him" that demanded that "he read everything that had ever been written."

Wolfe wrote the same way he read, compelled to put everything down on paper. His novels were still monstrously long even after Maxwell Perkins, his editor, cut out much of them.

Others have a book compulsion expressed in a different way. They don't necessarily read books, but rather just hoard them, accumulating as many as possible with little regard to their contents.

Those with just an interest in books usually express the wish that they could read more than they do. They may read an occasional best-seller, perhaps during a summer vacation or while on a plane, and they may have a few books in their homes. Mostly they regard reading books as a worthwhile ideal that can never be achieved in their own lifetime. There are simply too many other things to do.

Books are a hobby to collectors, those with an interest in certain books by certain authors. If they have enough money, they will be willing to pay high prices for these books. Collectible books lose value when they are handled, so if those who collect books also read books, they read less valuable copies.

A passion for books is what I have and have had for most of my life. There are many others like me. We are the ones who keep bookstores in business, although in the general population we remain a minority. We usually have at least one book in progress. We like to talk about books with others. We love the appearance of books on our shelves.

We aren't as crazy as Thomas Wolfe, but sometimes we come close.

Everyone knew Polly

During the Twenties, Thirties and Forties, many of the most prominent people in show business, crime, politics, law enforcement and the literary world knew Polly Adler. The reason lies in the title of Debby Applegate's 2021 biography, Madam. Adler's constantly moving brothel in New York City is where important people, including even many women like Dorothy Parker and Katherine Hepburn, went for fun.

A Russian Jew, she bravely traveled to New York alone in 1913 at the age of 13, although most of her family later followed. She struggled to make a living, finally turning to prostitution. She quickly realized this could be her ticket to success. Her plan was to retire early and find a good man to marry. It didn't quite work out that way.

Not a very attractive woman herself, she realized she would do better as a madam, and she worked tirelessly to hire better girls to attract better, meaning richer, customers. Prohibition came at just the right time for her, and soon she was selling illicit booze as well as illicit sex. She made big money, much of which went to bribing cops, many of whom betrayed her.

Later in life, Adler told her own story in her best-selling book A House Is Not a Home, published in 1953. The book was ghost-written and left out most of the names and most of the details. Applegate provides these in her account. The men who flocked to Polly's read like a Who's Who for that period of history: among them, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley, Milton Berle, the Marx Brothers, Jimmy Durante, Wallace Beery, Paul Whitman, John Garfield, Joe DiMaggio, Huey Long, James Thurber, Desi Arnez, Walter Winchell and even the infamous Judge Crater, as well as such gangsters as Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano. Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't come to her, but she claimed she sent girls to him.

Some of the more than 600 women who worked for Polly Adler later became famous, including Martha Raye and Dorothy Lamour.

In the end, Applegate's book is less the story of a notorious madam than a history of an era, or a series of eras — the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, Broadway, the Jazz Age, organized crime and World War II in America. It is all there in this book, and Polly Adler was right in the center of it all.

No rules

W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

I would change that a little bit: "Fortunately, no one knows what they are."

If I were to compose my own three rules for novelists, they might be something like:

1. Time should move only in one direction, from past to present.

2. The good guys must always win.

3. It should always be clear to the reader what's going on.

But if my three rules, or any three rules, were followed, many of the greatest novels, including many of my own favorites, would have never been written. Sometimes backstories are necessary. Sometimes heroes must die, or at least take their lumps.  Sometimes early confusion in a novel makes the clarity at the end sweeter.

Children need rules. Drivers need rules. Banks need rules. Writers don't need rules. This is what leads to creativity and originality.  Some novelists write books without chapters. Some have sentences that go on for pages. Some have stories that jump back and forth in time. Some kill off their main character in the middle of the story. Some of these efforts please readers and/or critics. Some don't. That judgment, not adherence to any rules, ultimately determines quality.

Woody's defense

Even Woody Allen apparently thinks the furor over his marriage to Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, decades younger, and Mia's accusation that he molested his own daughter represents the center of his life, for he devotes more attention to this than anything else in his 2020 autobiography Apropos of Nothing.

In contrast, he gives just a few sentences to most of the many films he directed. He writes just one paragraph about Magic in the Moonlight, yet neglects to even mention the title. He has made so many movies, in addition to all the other aspects of his long career, that if he gave each one the attention it deserves his book would be much longer than the 392 pages it already is.

That Allen writes so much about Mia Farrow and Soon-Yi, now his wife of many years, seems justified, for too few others have been willing to tell his side of the story. He says that Mia has always been something of a mental case, abusive to her many adopted children, yet she is so beautiful and such a good actress that he cast her in many of his movies even after she started making accusations against him. And her innocent appearance and acting talent also helps explain why her accusations were almost universally believed.

Allen points out that the official investigation into Mia's charges found no evidence of guilt on his part. Soon-Yi was neither his daughter nor stepdaughter — he was never married to Mia — and she was over 18 when they began their relationship, he says. She was only too happy to escape Mia, who once struck her with a phone, Allen writes.

Although he works hard to defend himself, especially against the charge that he abused his own daughter, Dylan, he is otherwise quite self-effacing in his book. He says he loves making movies, but doesn't regard them highly and never watches them or reads what others write about them. He has no interest in awards. He claims to be unworthy of being mentioned in the company of great directors, even though he has actually been in the company of many of these directors, who have welcomed him as their equal.

He repeatedly claims not to be an intellectual, despite the intellectual pretenses of many of his films, especially the dramatic ones few people actually enjoy watching. His comedies did much better at the box office. He does admit to a comedic gift, which shows up on every page of his autobiography, even when he is describing the worst aspects of his life.

Celebrating kinkiness

Kinkiness has been around for a hundred years.

Well, not kinkiness itself. Who knows when that started? But rather the word kinkiness, which was first used in print in 1924, according to There's a Word for It by Sol Steinmetz, a book I open each year at this time to  celebrate words that have just turned 100.

The Roaring Twenties were well underway by 1924, and anything goes, or went as the case may be — even kinkiness apparently.

It seemed to be a good year for slang terms, many of which were welcomed into the language and continue to be used today. Here are some of them: blah, flub, gotta, ho-hum, hooey, magic bullet, malarkey, naysaying, pix, racketeer, sexpert, shush, socko, stinko, stoolie, swoosh, two-time, uh-huh, wisecrack, wow and you-hoo.

That year brought us more serious words, too, such as beautician, headcount, house-train, hype, interstate, Leftist,  photocopy, pressure group, pull tab, superego and voyeurism.

Words of creation

Language shapes even creates, experience. Putting something into words brings it into existence.

Frank Cioffi, One Day in the Life of the English Language

Those words from Frank Cioffi may sound outlandish at first, but think about them for a minute.

The Declaration of Independence created the United States, although there was also a bit of war involved. The Constitution, just words on paper, created the government that nearly 250 years later continues to guide the country's path. The laws written by Congress and other governmental bodies control our lives.

Marriages are created by repeating two simple words: "I do." A marriage is a legal thing, a physical thing, a spiritual thing. Words also end marriages.

Friendships are formed and also ended with mere words. Words do shape and create experience.

Cioffi's idea is also a biblical one. Genesis tells us that God created the universe and everything in it with mere words. "In the beginning was the Word," wrote John.

Cioffi's book is about language usage, and his final point is this: If words are this important, we had better try to use them clearly and correctly.

A voice for everyone

Frank L. Cioffi

To my mind, the most interesting part of Frank L. Cioffi's book One Day in the Life of the English Language comes at the very end when he reflects on why proper language usage, which is what his book is about, is important.

"Language matters because its careful use makes society work more smoothly," he writes. This is one of those things that seem so obvious that we rarely give it much thought. Of course language makes society work more smoothly. To get along and to get things done, we need to communicate effectively with each other. That's what language is all about.

One of the many negatives about four years of an open U.S. border is that the majority of those flooding across that border do not speak English. This poses difficulties not just for assimilation but also for education, employment, law enforcement, medical care, shopping and even driving down streets and highways.

Yet even among those who speak the same language, misunderstandings and conflict can occur when one or more parties does not understand the meaning of words or cannot communicate clearly.

Cioffi goes even further when he says, "Giving everyone a voice is the start —no, more: a prerequisite — for a better, even a moral, culture." And so he moves from a smoothly operating culture to one that is better and finally to one that is more moral — all because of better language usage.

He is talking not just about speech, which has obvious importance. But now, perhaps more than ever before, it is important for people to be literate. So much communication is now done through texts, emails and other platforms that require reading and writing.

In a smooth running, better operating and more moral society, everyone has a voice, but that requires everyone knowing how to use that society's primary language.

Still learning the language

After 16 years of formal education and a lifetime spent working with the English language, including several years as a copy editor, I still do not know what terms like gerund and past participle mean. Nor do I care. So why did I read a language-usage book called One Day in the Life of the English Language (2015) by Frank L. Cioffi that is full of such terms?

Perhaps it was the title and the concept behind the book. Cioffi simply picks a day — Dec. 29, 2008 — and samples various newspapers, magazines and other publications printed that day and explores how the English language was used on that particular day. Mostly he finds fault, which is interesting especially when his target is The New Yorker, a magazine with a reputation for its careful editing.

The fact is, there is much disagreement about what is proper language usage, and Cioffi even concedes that writers and editors should follow the style of their own publication, even while insisting that his own views are more correct.

For instance, he says there should be a comma before the "and" in a series, as with "bell, book, and candle." The Associated Press Stylebook, which I followed during my long newspaper career, regards that comma as unnecessary. In other words, AP favors "bell, book and candle." I continue to follow AP style, and not just out of habit, except in rare instances where one more comma can add to clarity. Cioffi's view is that, yes, that last comma is usually unnecessary but should be used anyway because of those rare instances when it is helpful.

Most of his book is about as interesting as any English class about grammar and usage you ever sat through when you were in school, yet it does have its moments, such as when he finds fault with highbrow publications like The New Yorker. ( And when he writes about when to use such as and when to use like. Did I get it right this time?)

The time for low standards

Isaac Asimov

Sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov famously said, "If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."

Asimov was known for being a prolific writer, with hundreds of books to his credit. These included not just science fiction, but also books on science and such subjects as Shakespeare and the Bible. He was also noted for writing quickly off the top of his head. He didn't worry about drafts or revisions, and he left the editing to his editors.

Asimov would not have agreed with writing teacher Roy Peter Clark, who not only urged starting with a rough draft but also said, "Lower your standards at the beginning."

While I admired Isaac Asimov and have read many of his books, I write more in the way Clark suggests. Start with a draft and with low standards. And I mean low standards about everything — spelling, punctuation, grammar, factual accuracy, style, everything.

The important thing is to get your basic idea or argument or story down on paper — or on your computer — and then improve on it later. Spend too much time getting your first paragraph perfect and you can lose track of where you intended to go with your second paragraph.

Asimov, in effect, wrote nothing but first drafts, and perhaps he was not as far from Roy Peter Clark's thinking as it might first appear. He put down his ideas, and that was enough for his readers because they were wonderful ideas. He was never known for his style or for the grace of his language. He just wrote first drafts, and for him that was enough.

Joy and light, but not much else

It still baffles me that one must go to the mystery section of any bookstore to find the novels of Alexander McCall Smith. Even his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels are out of place there. In The Joy and Light Bus Company (2021), the most intriguing mystery is whether Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni will lose his shirt, his auto repair shop and his wife's detective agency by investing in a bus company.

Precious Ramotswe does have a client for her agency, a man worried that his aging father will leave his home to a "wicked woman," the nurse who had taken care of him for years. But this generates little interest. Let's get back to the Joy and Light Bus Company, readers are probably thinking.

The 22nd novel in the wonderful series retains the charm and humor that has made the series so popular, yet it lacks the cohesive strength of earlier books. McCall Smith does give us some weak surprises, but they are not enough to make a novel we will remember as fondly as some of the others.

Keeping pace

The art of reading is among other things the art of adopting that pace the author has set. Some books are fast and some are slow, but no book can be understood if it is taken at the wrong speed.

Mark Van Doren, American poet

Mark Van Doren

I like Mark Van Doren's phrase "the art of reading." When we learned to read, it was a science. We learned the words, how to pronounce them, what they meant. We learned about punctuation. With time reading became an art, or it did for most of us. Two equally literate people do not necessarily read in the same way. One may see meanings and implications that the other misses. Writing that excites one person can bore another.

Van Doren's main point is about adopting the pace of the author. What does "pace of the author" mean? Well, compare David Baldacci with Henry James. Baldacci writes thrillers, with short chapters, mostly simple words and lots of action. You probably aren't going to read a Baldacci novel at a pace of one chapter each night before turning out the lights. It wasn't written that way. If you try to make such a book your bedtime reading, you will probably not get much sleep.

A James novel would be an equally poor choice as a bedside book. It wouldn't keep you awake, but would rather put you to sleep after a paragraph or two. (On second thought, it sounds like an ideal beside book.)

Seriously, to appreciate a Henry James novel or almost any work of serious literature, one needs to be wide awake, fully alert and willing to read at the same pace as the writer — slow and deliberate, in other words. A few pages at a time may be enough,

Read a Baldacci novel too slowly and you would forget what all the excitement is about. Read a Henry James novel too quickly and you will miss everything.

Campaign lies

George Orwell

During the political season — and isn't it always the political season? — one's thoughts can turn to George Orwell. "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others," we remember from Animal Farm. It sounds like the double-talk we hear during political campaigns, doesn't it?

Politicians lie, of course. That's just what they do. They need to win votes, so they say what they need to say to win those votes. Thus, one group is told one thing and another group something else. How they act once in office often bears little resemblance to what they said on the campaign trail.

Listen to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's campaign ads this year and you might think he is a Republican and a friend of Donald Trump. I have known Sherrod since we were both in our 20s and have spoken with him many times and sometimes wrote newspaper endorsements in support of him, and believe me, he is not a Republican. Rather he is a Democrat running for re-election in Ohio, which is now a Republican state, and he will say what he needs to say to win votes.

Both presidential candidates have told us lies, but they seem to be different kinds of lies. Donald Trump exaggerates. He boasts. He promises impossible things. Yet there is a positive side to these lies. They at least tell us what he believes in, what he desires for the country, what he hopes to accomplish.

With Kamala Harris, we are left in the dark. Her campaign seems more designed to hide what she believes in, what she desires for the country, what she hopes to accomplish.

Orwell wrote, "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink." Word salad, in other words.

Wrapping up

Richard Russo ties up his Fool trilogy nicely with Somebody's Fool (2023), following in the footsteps of Nobody's Fool and Everybody's Fool.

North Bath, N.Y., the small town at the center of the earlier novels, has ceased to exist in the third one, having been swallowed up by its wealthier neighbor, Schuyler Springs. The characters we have come to know, like their town, seem lost. Where do they fit in now?

Doug Raymer, the former North Bath police chief, lost his job when the force was disbanded, while Charice, his girlfriend (or is it former girlfriend?), has been named police chief in Schuyler Springs. Yet because she is both black and female, her new position seems shaky.

Janey lost her abusive husband in the previous novel, but now she has replaced him with an abusive boyfriend, a dirty cop and one of Charise's main foes.

Peter, the son of Sully (the central figure in Nobody's Fool), can't decide whether he wants to leave or stay or whether he wants to continue as a college professor or work with his hands like his late father did. And then one of his estranged sons shows up, gets beaten badly by that dirty cop and gives Peter both a new problem and a possible solution to his other ones.

Jerome, Charice's twin brother, has lost all his swagger. His sister has given up on rescuing him from his depression and turns the job over to Raymer.

Russo, with his usual wit and style, gives direction to these and other lost characters by the time he concludes both the novel and the series. Somehow the everybody-wins ending doesn't destroy the art.

Breathing in, breathing out

Reading is my inhale, and writing is my exhale.

Glennon Doyle, American author

I do my writing in the morning, my reading in the afternoon. It is mostly a matter of energy. I have more of it in the morning, so that is when I write, which takes more energy than reading. In the afternoon I enjoy relaxing with a book and a pot of tea.

Glennon Doyle

I am drawn to Glennon Doyle's observation that reading and writing are both part of the same thing, just as inhaling and exhaling are both parts of breathing.

In my case, that is literally true. In this blog I write mostly about the books I have read. Yet in some sense this is true of everyone who writes. There was a reason our teachers insisted that we cite references in our term papers. What we wrote was supposed to be based on what others had written, not a copy or a paraphrase but rather a digestion of the writing of others into our own thoughts and words. Writing builds on what has been read.

This is true not just of content. It is also true of style and grammar and spelling and punctuation. We learn as we read, and what we learn influences how we write as well as what we write.

Even our letters, texts and emails are often a response to the letters, texts and emails we have received. We breathe in, and then we breathe out.

The burden of untold stories

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou once said "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

I touched on this topic a couple of weeks ago ("How can stories be bad?" Oct. 4). When you have story, you must tell it to someone. It's like scratching an itch. Sometimes anyone will do. My father used to love to tell his stories. Within a couple minutes of meeting a total stranger he would be off and running with his stories, and he would continue telling them as long as the stranger was willing to listen.

I tried to satisfy my own compulsion to tell my stories by writing my memoirs during Covid, when there wasn't much else to do.

Novelists and short story writers who, in addition to having all those personal stories that all of the rest of us have inside us, have fictional stories bursting to get out. To some extent, they write stories because they must. Stories come to them, and so they write them down and share them with anyone willing to pay money for them. Unlike the rest of us, they get paid for their compulsion.

Angelou uses the word bearing in regard to untold stories, suggesting that an untold story is a burden. One relieves the burden by telling the story. That works for most of us, but not for my father. He needed to tell the same stories over and over again, sometimes to the same audience.

Giving away Sis

As much as Lonnie is impossible — and everyone agrees that she is — she's still my dear, sweet, lumbering big sister, and you can't give away a sister!

Laurie Fox, My Sister from the Black Lagoon

More than a quarter of a century after it was published in 1998, Laurie Fox's novel My Sister from the Black Lagoon may be even more topical now than it was then.

Clearly autobiographical — the subtitle reads "A novel of my life" — the first-person novel tells of Lorna, a girl growing up in the 1960s whose big sister is loud, uncontrollable and driven by dark compulsions. Mostly Lonnie wants to be a boy and hates it when her mother forces her to wear a dress.

Lorna loves her sister, yet resents it that Lonnie gets most of their parents' attention. She also hates it when Lonnie is sent to a home for autistic and mentally ill children.

Sometimes the novel is as funny as its title and cover illustration suggest, yet the story proves ultimately sobering, especially as Lorna matures, goes to college and realizes that she herself has, in effect, given away her sister. She calls Lonnie or visits her only as often as guilt forces her to.

What's more, Lorna has become her sister in a sense, a misfit struggling to find her place in the world.

There's much to like about this disturbing novel.

Mysteries galore

Julia Spencer-Fleming's Hid from Our Eyes (2020) begins with one mystery and ends with another. (Don't you hate those mystery series that you must read in order to properly appreciate, when so many of us just read them as we find them?)

Actually there are three mysteries as the novel opens (and at least that many as it ends). The body of a young woman in a party dress is found in the middle of a road, both her identity and cause of death unknown. But an identical unsolved crime also happened in 1972 and earlier in 1952.

Millers Kill police chief Russ van Alstyne, who as a young Vietnam veteran was the initial suspect in the 1972 case, now has his job on the line because of an approaching vote that could disband the small-town police force. The pressure to solve these crimes, or at least the most recent one, and save his department becomes intense.

Meanwhile the chief's wife, Clare, the Episcopal priest, has a new baby to take of while she fights her compulsion for alcohol and/or drugs. Just the same, she gets involved in helping her husband solve this perplexing mystery.

The novel has much more going on, including the chief's mother's longtime relationship with the former police chief and a lawsuit involving one present deputy and a former one.

As for the mysteries Spencer-Fleming leaves us with at the end, they include the disappearance of one of the novel's characters, Russ's future after he is forced to resign and the question of what will happen to Clare after she yields to temptation.

Another mystery, at least to me, is which of her novels I will read next, a later one in the series or one of the earlier ones I missed?

The pride of discovery

Describing his book collecting habits, author Jonathan Lethem said, "I remember pursuing — in a way, what I still do — writers that seemed to me that only I knew about. So collecting them wasn't a matter of spending a lot of money."

Yes, collecting something that nobody else is can be a cheap hobby. Yet Lethem's phrase "writers that seemed to me that only I knew about" suggests something more than just pinching pennies. It hints at pride, the pride of discovery.

Most of us enjoy discovery, something we can tell our friends about. Whether it's a new restaurant, a new movie (or perhaps even an old movie nobody has talked about in years), a new song or that author that nobody else in our group has read, it can give us a sense of satisfaction, even pride.

Perhaps there is even the pride of being something of a rebel: Everybody else is listening to the latest popular songs or reading the latest bestsellers, but you are listening to this obscure singer or reading this obscure author that others haven't found yet.

I was in college when I "discovered" Edward Lewis Wallant. Wallant died in his mid-thirties after writing just four novels, but I devoured all four of them and thought he was something special. I have not read any of these books since then, and I do not know how they hold up. I do know that the general public never did discover Wallant, which in one way was a disappointment to me. Maybe I was totally wrong about him. Or perhaps I was among the few who recognized his genius. Let's go with that one.

Recovering from an introvert hangover

The Powerful Purpose of Introverts (2020) by Holley Gerth may not be the best book for introverts — that might be Quiet by Susan Cain — but it will be helpful for many of those convinced there is something wrong with them.

She includes many useful points. For example, she quotes Dr. Debra Johnson as saying, "We're not slow thinkers; we're deep thinkers." I have often thought of myself as a slow thinker because I don't think of the right thing to say until after it's too late to say it.

Later she quotes a psychologist as saying that introverts would rather find meaning than bliss. In my own experience, meaning produces bliss.

Gerth gives words to feelings introverts know well. Introverts, she says, need to time alone to recover from peopling. She calls this an introvert hangover or being dopamine drunk. Being around other people, especially talkative people, for too long drains energy from introverts. Time alone or time with one special someone relieves this condition.

The author is fond of lists, tests, quizzes and diagrams, and a reader may get tired of checking boxes and filling in blanks. Yet some of these may prove revealing and worthwhile, so don't ignore them all.

In the end, Gerth makes the same points made by Cain and others: If you are an introvert, there is nothing wrong with you. Your mind just works differently than that of an extrovert. There are more of you than you think. You can do some things better than extroverts can. Many of the world's most successful people have been introverts.

One question remains, however. Why don't extroverts need books like this to make them feel better about themselves?

Going to the source

When we read history written by Candice Millard, it is easy to imagine we're watching a movie. Whether she is telling about Theodore Roosevelt nearly dying while exploring the Amazon (The River of Doubt) or the death of President Garfield (Destiny of the Republic), her details are so vivid that we picture them as if on a giant screen.

This happens again in River of the Gods (2022), her book about the attempts by Richard Burton and John Speke to find the source of the Nile. How could someone not want to make a movie about this?

Now it seems hard to imagine that finding the source of the Nile River was considered so important to mid-19th century explorers. As Millard tells, it was mostly an excuse to explore the interior of Africa, which was then still largely a mystery to those in Western Europe. Europeans went to the coast of Africa to buy slaves, but they didn't know what they might find in the interior of this huge continent.

Burton and Speke began as allies, turned into rivals and eventually became enemies. This was more Speke's doing, than Burton's. Burton was easy going and quick to forgive. Not so Speke.

Burton was a restless British intellectual who spent little time in Britain. He learned languages easily and made most of his money translating dirty books from other cultures. He considered the Nile a worthy challenge, and hired Speke, a dedicated hunter, to go with him on his underfunded expedition in 1856.

Both men were sick from one illness or injury or another for most of the journey. They discovered Lake Tanganyika, which seemed like a good candidate for the source, but Speke alone was healthy enough to make it to Nyanza, which he renamed for Queen Victoria, and decided that was the true source. Burton remained unconvinced, but Speke beat Burton back to London and took all the credit, even though Burton had headed the expedition.

Speke later returned to Africa to better explore Lake Victoria. Back in London, although Speke had the advantage of seeing Lake Victoria and of having more friends and more money, he was a terrible writer and a terrible speaker, skills that Burton possessed in spades. On the night before they were scheduled to debate the subject, Speke, the experienced hunter, "accidentally" killed himself with a shotgun.

There is much more to the story, of course, and Millard tells it well. Even now the question of the source of the Nile may not be entirely answered. After all, there are rivers feeding into Lake Victoria. So where is the true source of the Nile?

Still Popular after all these years

I happened to acquire an April 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine at the same time I had a May/June 2024 issue. So how much has this long-surviving magazine changed in 75 years?

The first obvious change is the size. The magazine has become both larger and smaller. Once 6 1/2 by 9 1/2 inches, Popular Mechanics has grown to 7 by 10. Yet the magazine that had 336 pages in the 1949 edition now has just 76 pages. And this is a magazine that now publishes just six times a year, rather than 12.

The price has jumped from 35 cents to $5.99. Compared to other magazine prices, $5.99 still seems like a bargain.

The difference in pages clearly stems from the fact that the older magazine contains significantly more advertising. It also contains numerous short articles, rather than just a few longer ones.

The covers are strikingly different. The earlier issue shows a man pointing toward a new house and telling a woman, "We built this cabin for $300." The more recent issue shows a circle of moons from our solar system. In the middle are the words "Every. Single. Moon. Ranked." This is Popular Mechanics? It looks more like Popular Science.

Articles in the older issue cover such subjects as how to swing a golf club, fly casting, handmade paper, how debris is removed from New York harbor and, of course, building that $300 cabin.

Other than the main article about moons, which I found to be the most interesting article in either magazine, the contents of the 2024 version of Popular Mechanics are not that unexpected. There are articles about California freeways, a female participant in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and the best way to fix foundation cracks.

Popular Mechanics magazine has always covered a lot of ground, something for everybody.  And now it even covers the stars. Or at least the moons.

Second chances

In Carla Buckley's intriguing 2019 novel The Liar's Child, there is so much lying going on that it is never quite clear to whom the title refers. And this proves to be a good thing when truth eventually wins out.

Sara Lennox gets a new life as part of the witness protection program, though she has no intention of staying around to testify. Her father taught her never to cooperate with the authorities. In the meantime she lives in an apartment near North Carolina's Outer Banks and works in a dreary job cleaning places rented by tourists.

Her neighbors are a troubled family. The beautiful wife accidentally left Boon, their preschool son, in a hot car for hours. The child survived, but now a child welfare worker checks up on them frequently. Whit, the husband, seems out of his depth, especially after his wife disappears. Cassie, their daughter just entering her teens, has become rebellious and dependent. She frequently escapes her homelife by dangerously leaping from one balcony to another and exiting through Sara's apartment.

Then comes a hurricane. With their mother missing and their father busy elsewhere, the kids look to Sara as their reluctant rescuer. She can think only of ditching the kids so that she can disappear into another new life.

But then, of course, things happen, and she finds a new life she never expected.

Buckley keeps things moving and the suspense building. Her novel is never quite a thriller and never quite a mystery, although there are elements of each. Mostly it is a novel of second chances and unexpected saviors.

Misery plus poetry

Her father was bigger than the world and a lot less wonderful.

Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

Beauty and ugliness often seem to come together, as if in a package. That is true in the world we live in, in the people we know, in our own lives and even in the novels we read. That may be the message in The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright (2023).

The novel tells of the broken lives of three women in the family of Phil McDaragh, an admired Irish poet whose poems are sprinkled throughout the novel. McDaragh writes poetry about romantic love, and for inspiration he thinks he needs a succession of young lovers. He abandons his wife when she becomes seriously ill. His daughter, Carmel, and his granddaughter, Nell, feel the same abandonment as they lead their confused, often aimless lives. Their own love affairs are no more meaningful or lasting than McDaragh's. They just lack the poetry, which may be why they return again and again to his.

Enright does not deny us the ugly details of these relationships in language that is sometimes beautiful and often vulgar. The contrast seems to be important.

My favorite line in the novel comes early: "We don't walk down the same street as the person walking beside us." How true. We see different things even when looking at the same thing. How we perceive what we see depends upon our different backgrounds, different experiences, different ways of thinking. Carmel and Nell may walk down the same streets as those next to them, yet as the offspring of this famous poet they see different streets.

How can stories be bad?

Before I leave the book The Last Unknowns, edited by John Brockman, I must comment on what, to me, seems like the oddest question posed in this book of questions:

Jonathan Gottschall

"Are stories bad for us?" This question is posed by Jonathan Gottschall, who teaches in the English department at Washington & Jefferson College.

How could stories be bad for us? And how could someone who teaches stories for a living suggest such a thing? I would be interested in hearing Gottschall's argument. I'll bet there's a story there.

Everyone tells stories. Some are true. Some are embellished. Some are entirely fiction. Yet we all tell stories. And we all listen to them or read them or even dream them, usually with pleasure, which is itself a good.

When you experience a funny incident or perhaps have a near-collision on the highway or an unexpected surgery, one of your first impulses is the tell your story to someone. Somehow you don't feel fulfilled until you can tell your story. The better the story, the more often you will tell it.

We learn from stories. That is why literature is taught at Washington & Jefferson and most other colleges. Stories teach us how other people live and how other people think. They teach us about good decisions and bad ones. They help us practice empathy. They excite our imaginations.

History, at its best, is a series of stories. And so we learn history through stories. In fact, a good many disciplines, from art to zoology, are taught, in part, through stories.

Our entertainment, whether we read novels, watch movies or listen to popular songs, is often story-based. Even a TV reality show usually takes the form of a story. A baseball game tells a story. We stick around to the ninth inning to see how it turns out.

Religions are also usually story-based. The Bible is a collection of stories.

The articles we read in magazines and newspapers are often called stories.

There are bad stories, certainly, but stories are vital and basic to human existence. How can that be bad?

Challenging questions

John Brockman

In my last post I wrote about some of the lame questions I found in the book edited by John Brockman, The Last Unknowns. Now I want to give equal time to some of the questions I consider more challenging.

"Why is the world so beautiful?" If there is no God and no purpose to the universe, how does one explain sunsets and rainbows and spring mornings?

"Where were the laws of physics written before the universe was born?" asks a physicist. Because the laws of physics are themselves beautiful, this sounds very much like the last question.

"Why do we experience feelings of meaning in a universe without purpose?" Here we go again. Aren't "feelings of meaning" also beautiful? So maybe there is a purpose after all.

"Are people who cheat vital to driving progress in human societies?" That may seem like an odd question, but it is an interesting one. Consider that the Jewish people trace their origins back to Jacob, who cheated his brother out of his rightful inheritance. We have a system of justice, a good thing, in part to protect people from those who cheat. How many advanced human societies are built on land won by cheating native peoples? I'm sure we could find many other examples.

"What will be the use of 99 percent of humanity for the 1 percent?" This frightening question is rapidly coming close to a frightening answer. As artificial intelligence makes human workers obsolete, what good are they? Increasingly the masses just become a burden and a danger for the few who are in charge.

Talking about scary questions, how about this one: "Will we pass our audition as planetary managers?" And if we don't pass the audition, who is going to say so? Those who rush us toward global government surely must realize that dictatorship is the only possible result. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that.

"Is the brain a computer or an antenna?" I don't know what that means, but it sounds profound.

"Is scientific knowledge the most valuable possession of humanity?" I like the fact that this question was posed by a philosopher, not a scientist. That suggests what the questioner believes.

No such thing as a stupid question?

John Brockman invited many of the best minds in the world to pose questions for his book The Last Unknowns. So why do so many of their questions seem stupid to me?

Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand, best known for Whole Earth Catalog, asks, "Can wild animals that are large and dangerous be made averse to threatening humans?" Does he want to tame lions and alligators? Or does he want to drug them or kill them? Can humans be made averse to threatening wild animals?

Someone else asks, "Will scientific advances about the causes of sexual conflict help to end the 'battle of the sexes'"? Understanding the battle of the sexes is one thing, but do we really want science to end it? Wouldn't that mean ending the differences between men and women?

"How do I describe the achievements, meanings, and power of Beethoven's piano sonata Appassionata?" Yes, how do you describe it, and how is that more important than how any other music lover describes it? And is this really the last question humanity should be asking?

"How can we design a machine that can correctly answer every question, including this one?" Some questions have answers, but some don't. There are rhetorical questions, for example. There are questions like, "How are you feeling today?" that can have imprecise answers or different answers depending upon circumstances. Why would we even want a machine to answer all questions?

"How will we know if we achieve universal happiness?" Maybe when everyone is happy. I wonder, has this scientist ever read 1984 or Brave New World?

"Can we create new senses for humans — not just touch, taste, vision, hearing, smell, but totally novel qualia for which we don't have words?" No comment necessary.

"Will civilization collapse before I die?" According to people on both sides of the political spectrum, it could happen soon after the next election.

"Has consciousness done more good or bad for humanity?" Is this professor suggesting that we might be better off if we were all unconscious?

"Will questioning be replaced by answering without questions?" This comes from a physicist, in whose field I am sure answers sometimes come before anyone thinks to ask the questions. But on the whole, a world without questions seems neither desirable nor possible.

A journalist named Carl Zimmer asks, "How does the past give rise to the the future?" The answer, I believe, is that thin dividing line known as the present.

"How can the process of science be improved?" Someone else asks a similar question. The answer seems obvious to me — stick to science. Forget about politics and political correctness. When scientists no longer feel free to express dissenting findings in such areas as climate change, the treatment of Covid, gender transition and evolution, real science is no longer being practiced.

Last questions

For more than two decades, John Brockman annually posed a question and then invited scientists and others to answer it in short essays. These have resulted in fascinating books, some of which I have reviewed here. In the last book in the series, The Last Unknowns (2019), Brockman invited individuals from a variety of fields to pose the ultimate unanswered question. Thus the book is composed of many questions, suggesting that Brockman could have continued his series for many more years. There are numerous "last unknowns," it turns out. Some questions are posed multiple times, in one form or another, in these pages.

"Is a single world language and culture inevitable?" asks a professor of evolutionary biology. A Harvard professor answers that question with another question: "In which century or millennium can all human be expected to speak the same primary language?"

Immortality is another frequent topic on the minds of intellectuals. One asks if immortality is even desirable. Another wonders if even a thousand years would be too long to live. Yet another worries about the practical implications of humans living significantly longer than they do now.

Many questions center around artificial intelligence. One man asks, "Will AI make the Luddites (mostly) right?" Another puts it differently: "How far are we from wishing to return to the technologies of the year 1900?" I would settle for the year 2000. Other experts take a much more positive view of AI. One wonders how AI can help create global institutions that we can trust. I would ask, how can we trust AI?

A common subject of these questions has to do with religion and spirituality. "Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century?" asks Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton. (Does she want to put herself out of a job?) Others ask variations of the same question. In other words, why do we still have religion when people should know better by now?

Others seem to be asking about what religions call the spirit, without actually using that word. One person asks, "Does consciousness reside only in our brains?" Another asks, "Can consciousness exist in an entity without a self-contained physical body?" Another, "Is there a subtle form of consciousness that operates independent of brain function?"

Interesting questions. More next time.