The Questioning Librarian

On Friday I found out that an old friend of mine had passed away after a long illness. We hadn't been in touch for quite a while; he was a very private person and had told me the last time we talked that he was having some health issues. While it was nothing I needed to worry about, he assured me, it made regular conversation difficult and he would be back in touch when things settled. Of course they never did, and the pain of loss was magnified by the fact that I hadn't spoken to him in so long. It's shockingly easy how people, even ones you care about, can pass out of your life with hardly a whisper. It's easy to get caught up in the business of life--in work, appointments, hobbies outside of work--and forget about the things that make it really matter, the connections with other human beings who are on the very same journey that we are. It is beyond easy to postpone a phone call, email, or whatever method of communication to those we care about but may not, for what...

A few weeks ago I finished The Monkey's Voyage: How Improbable Journeys Shaped the History of Life by Alan de Queiroz. It was a fascinating read, detailing how the voyage of plants and animals between the continents has changed the world in which we live. Even, de Queiroz asserts, something that is both random and highly unlikely in and of itself is nearly inevitable over millions of years of life, whether it is a new plant colonizing an island or monkeys from Africa crossing into South America. The book made me think once more about how randomness shapes the history of life. If we know anything from science, it is that humans are not the inevitable outcome of evolution. Neither our dominance as a species nor even our existence were assured. Random and improbable events led us to where we are. Think about just a few of the moments where, had something been different, life would have taken another path. Whatever natural disaster caused the human population to bottleneck around ...

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the meaning of life. This is not unusual. It seems that nearly everyone has to come to terms with this question, wrestle with it a bit until they finally settle on an answer that gives them peace and allows them to go forward with life. Humanity has spent quite a lot of time dealing with this question as well--differing philosophies and religious belief systems attempt as best they can to provide an answer, though there has never been agreement as to what the meaning of life is. It also seems to me to be intrinsically linked to the question of what constitutes a good life, for certainly to have had a good life one must have understood what the meaning was. We, collectively and individually, search for a meaning to life that we can take as our own, one that gives us purpose and helps us make sense of the cold and chaotic universe we inhabit, where looking at the vastness of it all seems to mock the very idea that there is meaning and purpose...

Some days you sit down to write, and nothing comes. I think that this must happen to every writer at some point or other, even prolific ones like R.A. Salvatore and Ray Bradbury. They too must have looked at a blank page and sighed at the lack of words on it, going to the well of inspiration only to find that it is dry. I wonder how they wiled away the time, what they did to distract themselves from the fact that the muse is being stingy with her gifts of an exciting plot and the right words to bring it to life? Did Bradbury play with his toys (he famously enjoyed getting toys as gifts throughout his life)? Did Hemingway have another drink? Did Tolkien work at translating some Old English text? I wonder what Debbie Macomber or Nora Roberts do when they have writer's block. They may write several books a year, but it must happen to them too, every once in a while. Just like every writer has to deal with writer's block, surely every writer has their own way of coping with it a...

There are some books that are downright painful to peruse, books you feel like you should just stop reading at one point, because to keep going on is a bit too much. But, like watching the proverbial train wreck, no matter what you might wish, you simply cannot look away. While the subtitle of the book is "Two Parties and a Funeral--plus plenty of valet parking!-in America's Gilded Capital," it might well be subtitled "It's Even Worse Than You Thought." Leibovich's take-down of Washington D.C.'s political culture would be hard-pressed to be more dispiriting if it tried to be. In spite of Leibovich's humor, even a cynic like myself was even more jaded after reading this book. Truly, no one who garners a mention in the work comes off looking good, from Harry Reid and Barack Obama to Tim Russert and David Gregory.  "This Town," as it is sometimes referred to with a mixture of admiration and disgust, has always been a haven for the...

I admit that I had every intention of skipping this particular book; just reading about it put up a variety of red flags for me, and with so many other books to read I would have been happy to give it a pass. However, I received this as a gift for Christmas, and felt an obligation to read it. I was correct in my misgivings about the book. In fact, George Washington's Secret Six  was even more dreadful than I had anticipated. First, a word about the authors. Neither of the two men who co-wrote the book have any background in history. Brian Kilmeade is a well-known television personality, appearing on the Fox & Friends show on Fox News. Both he and Don Yaeger have a background in sports writing, which is not to say one has to be an historian to write an excellent book on a historical topic. Many non-historians have written great books about historical topics, but Kilmeade and Yaeger are not likely to be counted among them. In their amateurish hands, a story that should b...

My last few reads have all had to do with climate change in some way or other. Needless to say, it has been a depressing bit of reading. From Donald Prothero's chapter tackling climate change denial in Reality Check to the article about sea level rise in September's National Geographic to the book I just finished, Bill McKibben's Oil and Honey ,   being presented with the enormity and the gravity of the problem is daunting to say the least. Worse still is the knowledge that much of our government, including representatives who are supposed to be acting on behalf of "the people", has been bought completely by the fossil fuel industry, money from oil and coal companies flowing into the coffers of politicians who then dutifully halt even the most limp-wristed half-measures to tackle the climate problem.  For all the denial that exists out there, I've generally thought that the basic science of climate change was fairly simple to grasp and, in an ideal world,...