Erik Boisen

I have read more books by Kurt Vonnegut than any other author.  I guess I enjoy the way he painted a wacky view of the way people interact in societies.  He somehow even makes human atrocities seem like they take place in a safe, cartoonish, alternate reality where the author and reader can both analyze things from a safe distance.  No topic seems off-limits.  Much in the way Quentin Tarantino uses levels of violence in some of his films that I would find off-putting if another director/writer were presenting it, Vonnegut seems to have had the ability to present any topic in a humorous, non-offensive manner.

This book deals with an apocalyptic substance created by a reclusive scientist shortly before his demise.  This substance is called Ice Nine.  Ice Nine was initially created at the behest of the military in order to instantly make marshy or swampy ground easily traversable by crystallizing all the water in it with a single “seed” of Ice Nine.   The problem with the stuff, however, is that it worked too well.  The crystalizing process would carry itself through every adjoining water molecule.  In other words, if it was placed in a swamp, it would crystalize the swamp, the creek that fed it, and any rivers, lakes, and oceans that were also connected to it.  Given that people are comprised primarily of water, they were apt to crystalize as well when coming into contact with the substance.

For better or for worse, this existence of this substance never seems to actually be known by the military.  The only known samples are held by the adult children of the deceased creator, Dr. Hoenikker.  Something like Ice Nine is going to be very difficult to ensure lack of contact with bodies of water, but Dr. Hoenikker’s children tote shards of it around in thermos bottles.  In the end, Hoenikker’s children end up on the fictitious island of San Lorenzo.  Islands are land masses surrounded entirely by water, so are probably the worst place to bring Ice Nine, right?  In a ceremonial display of the island’s military might, or lack thereof, and in celebration of its triumph over a fictitious religion, some of the Ice Nine ends up in the ocean.  The sequence of events that leads to the Ice Nine ending up in the ocean is an entire chapter of hilarious misfortune that leads to the presumable end of the world as we know it.

Overall, this was a great book, but I would definitely rank it below Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Player Piano.  If you are new to his work, I would definitely start with Slaughterhouse Five.  Cat’s Cradle was a little slow in building the story, but the final chapters are some of Vonnegut’s best work.   As a side note, I used to listen to a guitarist named Joe Satriani quite a bit in the early 1990’s.  He had an instrumental song that I enjoyed called Ice Nine.  The song was recorded in 1987.  Obviously this song predated the internet by quite a bit, so I never had any idea of the song title’s origin.  Now I know!

I watched the Queen’s Gambit on Netflix a month or so ago and found it quite entertaining.  I looked to see the story’s origin and found that it is a work of fiction from the same author that wrote The Hustler many years earlier.  The Hustler became a 1961 movie starring Paul Newman as pool shark ‘Fast Eddie’ Felson.  A character that was continued in 1986 film, The Color of Money with Newman and Tom Cruise.  According to his Wikipedia page, Tevis taught English literature and creative writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio from 1965 to 1978, where he was named University Professor.  Tevis passed away in 1984 of lung cancer.

The book’s main character, Beth, resides in Kentucky and starts in the early 1950’s.  I have read many books that were later turned into feature-length films and have grown accustomed to movies leaving out many scenes that are present in the original printed story.  This is the first book I have read that was turned into a mini-series.  Just about everything in the book is in the Netflix mini-series.  The only significant omissions are from the very beginning of the book.  At a very young age, both of Beth’s parents are killed in an automobile crash in the beginning of the book and it appears to be accidental.  In the Netflix series, just Beth’s mother dies from what appears as vehicular suicide.  Her father, in the series, wants no part of raising her.  In both versions, Beth ends up being raised in a Kentucky orphanage from an early age.

Another omission in the Netflix series is the relationship between Beth and Jolene – another older orphan.  They have a sexual encounter in the book that is not present in the Netflix mini-series.  I can forgive this omission.  It did not add much to the story, and putting a sex scene with two very young girls on video would probably not be a good business decision.

The orphanage initially gives daily sedative pills to the girls to keep them well-mannered.  Beth builds an addiction to them as a child and struggles with this and alcohol addiction throughout the novel.  Very early in her stay at the orphanage, she notices that the custodian, Mr. Schaibel, plays a peculiar game in the basement during his free time.  This game turns out to be chess and Beth is strangely drawn to it.  She convinces a reluctant Mr. Schaibel to teach her this game, which she quickly becomes extremely proficient at.  She has an incredible ability to visualize and play out games completely in her head.  She ‘sees’ the moving  pieces above her as she lies in bed every night.  Her skill does not go unnoticed by Mr. Schaibel.  Mr. Schaibel is a pretty decent amateur player and young Beth learns to best him in a fairly short time.  Still in grade school, she is able to easily best all of the local high school chess club members simultaneously.

Then her addiction to the sedatives gets the better of her.  The orphanage no longer gives out the pills and she goes into withdrawal.  In an effort to quell her cravings, she attempts to steal some sedatives, is caught, and receives the worst imaginable punishment for her – no more chess.  For three years she is not allowed to physically play chess, but she still studies a chess book given to her by Mr. Schaibel – Modern Chess Openings.  At night she still visualizes the board and pieces moving around on the ceiling above her bed.

She is then adopted by a couple, Alma and Allston Wheatley, when she is 13 years old.  I say couple because  a husband and wife adopt her, but the husband, Allston, is a traveling salesman who is never home and seems to have no interest in Beth or Alma.  Beth seems to be acquired to give Alma an acquaintance  to keep her off of Allston’s back.  The book paints Alma much like Netfilx does.  She is a heavy-smoking, somewhat alcoholic, motivation-less housewife with zero ambition and a love of television.  In the book, however, she appears much more overweight and out of shape.

Outside the orphanage Beth learns that, if someone is good enough, he can actually make a good living playing chess.  I say ‘he’ because chess is completely male-dominated at the highest levels, particularly in the timeframe of this story.  Contrary to the lackadaisical Alma, Beth is highly motivated to excel.  She is driven to play and compete.  Alma has zero interest in Beth’s desire’s to play chess and Allston appears to have dropped out of the picture completely – leaving Beth and Alma without much income.  Beth needs five dollars to compete in a local tournament.  She has to write Mr. Schaibel to obtain this paltry sum.  She wins the tournament, and with it, a decent sum of money and local notoriety.  This event puts some motivation into Alma who sees the golden goose in Beth, in front of her.  They travel the country and fund their existence with Beth’s tournament winnings.

Eventually Beth makes it to tournaments outside of the US and becomes a fairly well-known player.  At a tournament in Mexico, Alma dies in her sleep after not feeling well for a few days.  Beth, still a minor, has to fend for herself.  Allston does not return, but tells Beth over the phone that she can have the house.  She continues the routine of  traveling and competing to fund her life.  Along the way she makes friends with other players, adds to her notoriety, and struggles with her addictions.  Two of her friends, Benny, and Bektik become love interests for short periods with romances largely taking a back seat to a passion for excelling at chess.

She is becoming a world-class player, but also a world-class addict.  She recognizes her problem and manages to re-connect with Jolene, who is now a graduate student and fitness fanatic.  Jolene manages to whip Beth into shape and steer her from her self-destructive ways.

At the end of the novel Beth is playing in Russia against the fictitious world champion Vasily Borgov.  She recognizes that the great Russians rely on each other for help in tournaments and she is given help by her friends back home at a critical moment before she is to finish her match with Borgov.  In the end she defeats Borgov and is able to thank everyone that helped her on her journey.

I just finished reading A Harvesting of Souls.

It is set in the fictitous American Midwest town of Taylorsville in the late 1950’s.  The book begins in an ice cream shop attended by a local teen named Betty on a wintery day.  She is all alone, business is slow, and she is reflecting on her future if she remains in this small town.  She had a friend who recently left town to lead a more exciting life and Betty ponders following in her friend’s footsteps.  Shortly before closing, she gets an odd, grissly-appearing customer that makes her feel uneasy.  This creepy fellow reveals himself to be a medical examiner who is headed to the next town to survey the victim of a murder.  Little does Betty know, that the victim this unusual customer is headed to see is the friend she had been thinking of.  You see, there is a curse on Taylorville.   Residents who attempt to leave it behind will surely be the victim of unfortunate circumstances.  The same is true for non-residents who attempt to move to Taylorville.

The book goes on about many strange occurances of different people trying to leave or move to Taylorville and all meet unfortunate fates.  Another strange aspect of the curse is that the population of Taylorville always remains a constant 4,253.  For every new birth, there must be a corresponding death.  As a result, a town member deciding to have a large family is going to be frowned upon.  There is one such family, the Boersma’s, that has four children. For much of their early lives, at least, these children are shunned by the other children of the town for being members of a large family.  Eventually though, one of the sons becomes very interested in the curse and its origins and becomes a key member of this small society.

It is later revealed that everyone in the town has the same Dutch heritage prior to arriving in Taylorville 140 or so years earlier.  There is even one resident who has been around for the entirety of that time.  He represents an almost shaman figure in the story.  By the end of the book, the townspeople discover the truth about themselves.  They are re-incarnates of souls dating back to the lost city of Atlantis and they eventually re-discover their long-lost purpose for being.

This book can be found at Lulu.com

 

Other than Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, this is the fastest I have ever gone through a book.  I started on a Sunday and finished on Thursday while I was working full-time.  There are really only two characters in this book, and neither is given a name.  It is almost entirely about a man and his son in a post-apocalyptic world.  Almost nothing has been left alive on earth.  Everything is covered with a gray dust as the pair venture South in hopes of finding better conditions.

During their travels, they must take care to not be detected by other survivors.   Many of those who survived have resorted to cannibalism for sustenance.  As they travel, they scrounge for leftover food from a bygone world and rest in makeshift camps where they cannot be seen from the road that takes them South.  They encounter scoundrels they must kill or flee from along the way.   For most of the story, they trust no one.  During their journey they both struggle to keep their hope of a better tomorrow alive.  They refer to it as “the fire”.  They eventually reach the ocean, which is also gray and devoid of life.  Shortly afterward, the father begins to get ill.  He eventually succumbs.

Shortly before the end, the father instructs his son to leave him and continue the journey.  The son stays with him for some time after he passes and then is approached by a stranger.  This stranger appears to be part of welcoming family, also with a young boy, that accepts him.

This book is pretty well written – given the subject matter.  This is not something that you can’t put down, but it does a very good job of explaining how arguments are formed in a legal setting.  Many times these methods also work in a non-legal setting.  I have a few years experience working as a law clerk in Chicago, so I have some familiarity with how legal arguments are framed.  This book may be more eye-opening for someone who is not as familiar with how lawyers argue cases.  I would recommend this to a high school student on a debate team or someone who has law school in his or her future.

This book concentrates entirely on forming arguments.  It does not talk about how to present yourself before the court.  I could see it helping a recent undergraduate prep for a legal writing class.  I definitely give this book a thumbs up for properly explaining what it sets out to explain, but it likely has a narrow audience of people who will find it intriguing.

I recently placed an order with Onnit for some supplements and received this book as a free gift.  It was a pretty easy read and contained lots of useful information.  It discusses nutrition, exercise, supplementation, meditation, and attitude.

I have been following trends in training and nutrition for about 40 years. There wasn’t much regarding exercise and nutrition that was new to me. This book would likely be very beneficial for someone who is new to fitness and nutrition, but if you have been training and keeping up with supplementation for a while, the book may not give you much. The first chapter outlines a drink consisting of lemon juice, water, and Himalayan sea salt. This is meant to rehydrate and get your mind and body ready for the day. I was already drinking this long before I read this book. I was working out in the heat for much of my free time this past summer and came up with this drink to keep myself hydrated. It is far healthier than a sugar-laden “recovery” drink. The book also suggests getting this concoction in your body before you consume any caffeine. The theory is that you probably wake up somewhat dehydrated, so consuming caffeine, which tends to dehydrate, first thing in the morning is not a good idea.

The part of the book that I found the most beneficial was the section that talked about meditation and attitude. I had previously meditated regularly when I first got into martial arts. This section did not really tell me anything new, but it did remind me of the benefits and motivated me to resume the practice.

Attitude is something I definitely need to work on. I know that a good attitude leads to good things, but I fear that I have let some of the negative aspects of the last decade of my life spoil my appreciation of the good things that have also happened during this time. This book has reminded me to work on being more grateful. I am trying to be more mindful of what is right rather than what is wrong.

I also need to mention that the language in this book is a little atypical. It can be a little rough in spots. I am not sure why. It did not help get any points across. I guess the author wanted to appear to have an “edge”? It did not really bother me, but it may alienate some readers. I certainly do not see the rough language attracting any reader, so I do not see the point. Fifty shades of supplementation and training? Anyhow, if you are fairly new to fitness and supplementation and don’t mind a little coarse language, this is a pretty decent book. It contains good information and it is easy to follow.

I have been using Duolingo for the past 18 months in an effort to learn Italian.  I came to the conclusion, that after about a year, Duolingo by itself is nothing but an exercise in frustration.  I made good progress for the first 12 months.  I felt that my vocabulary increased steadily and I was able to piece together the gist of most conversations I heard.  After a year, however, lessons starting taking me way too long.  Before the year mark, I was normally getting about 70-90% of my daily lessons  correct the first time through and would finish three lessons in about 15-20 minutes.  After a year I started getting maybe 30% of my lessons correct the first time through and three lessons were taking 45 minutes.  Getting most questions wrong for days on end is not good for one’s psyche.  I was not feeling like I was learning anything after a certain point.

There are several problems with Duolingo.  The first is that there is no explanation of why something is right or wrong in how grammar rules apply.  This is very difficult for a native English speaker.  English does not apply a gender to its nouns.  Italian and many other languages do.  English just uses the word “the” in front of a noun.  (Like the bus, the comb, or the fork).  In many languages, the equivalent of “the” depends on the gender of whatever item you are talking about.  Verbs that act on nouns also change based on the gender of the noun.  This is never explained by Duolingo.  I know some German, so I am somewhat familiar with this concept, but it is still very confusing without some sort of explanation as to how these grammatical rules apply.  Duolingo gives no explanations of any sort.

The other problem, which really baffles me, is that after 18 months of three lessons a day, the user has not been taught to count to ten???  I took German for two years in high school.  I also studied some Spanish and Korean.  I know how to count to ten in all these languages despite giving a fraction of the effort to Korean and Spanish that I have to Italian with Duolingo.  They start teaching counting after 16 months and then they mix numbers into sentences that I usually have trouble constructing if the numbers were not in there.   And they don’t just mix in numbers, they mix in equivalents to first, second, and third, for example, without first teaching one, two and three.  Every method I have ever seen teaches student to count early in their learning.  I used to enjoy learning a little Italian every day.  For the last 6 months I have absolutely despised it.  I used do lessons seven days a week.  I found myself using “weekend amulets” to avoid weekend lessons.  I lost all joy in learning Italian.

Today I realized that I am not going to learn much if I hate something.  I uninstalled Duolingo after 18 months of nearly three lessons a day.  I have installed Memrise.  Hopefully this will bring back some of the enthusiasm for learning I had when I started.  If you want to learn a new language, Duolingo definitely helps with vocabulary, but learning sentence construction will require something else.  Hopefully Memrise helps.

Update:

I tried Memrise for a while and found it too simplistic.  It is nice that it uses real people saying words and phrases, but I guess I was farther along than I thought.  I have re-installed Duolingo, but limit myself to one lesson a day.  I find that it is having me do more refresher lessons now.  Maybe I was going to fast.  I find that it is fun again at this pace.  I ask native Italian speakers and do Google searches if a concept is not explained by Duolingo.  It is a free app.  Maybe I was expecting a little too much of it.

 

I just recently finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs.  It was an incredibly interesting read.  I read the book partly because of Ashton Kutcher’s movie Jobs, in which he he portrayed Steve Jobs.  Jobs’ life seemed very interesting, and I wanted to learn more.  Kutcher did a great Job in the movie, but the movie did not do that well critically.  I now think I know why. While Kutcher did a great job looking and acting like Jobs, the movie omitted so many facts about his life, that it probably hurt the film’s credibility.  In fairness to the movie, which I found enjoyable before reading the book, it is limited to a couple of hours. The book is nearly 600 pages.  In my experience, 200 pages is usually enough for a feature-length film. This would mean an accurate portrayal would take five or six hours.  No one is going to make that movie. There were many facts of about Jobs’ life omitted from the movie, however, that I thought should have been included.
Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985.  Immediately following this he starts NeXT computer and puts considerable time and effort into it.  It is largely a failure, but an operating system that is developed for it ends up later to be his foot in the door back to Apple.  He ends up selling NeXT to Apple, effectively doubling his $50 million investment in it when Apple is desperate for a new operating system.

Jobs also starts Pixar during his exile from Apple. This created more wealth for Jobs than when Apple first went public.  Steve Jobs is very much responsible for saving Disney’s animation business with Pixar.  A Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monster’s Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Cars were largely created independently of Disney. These were Pixar’s films right out of the gate. Disney distributed these films, but Pixar created them.  Disney had very little success with animated movies in the 1980’s and although it created some very profitable animated movies in the 1990’s, it also had many duds. For every Aladdin and The Lion King there was The Rescuers Down Under, A Goofy Movie, and Ducktails.  Pixar was creating nothing but blockbusters that were also loved by critics.  Disney got smart and eventually bought Pixar in 2006. This deal gave Jobs 7% of Disney’s stock – a whopping $3.9 billion worth and made him Disney’s biggest shareholder at the time.

It says a lot about Jobs that he went back to a failing Apple after he had created immense success at Pixar.  He was running both Pixar and Apple in 1996.  He believed this may have cost him his life.  Why work that hard when you have billions of dollars?  Apple created the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad upon his return.  Jobs initially returned to Apple as the interim CEO, or iCEO.  He did not intend on staying.  I believe the “i” in all the Apple products comes from this.  He ended up staying until just months before his death in 2011.  He battled cancer for half of his second tenure at Apple.  He did some great things in this time, but was it worth it?

Apple saved the music industry with iTunes.  Most music was being pirated when iTunes came out. He convinced people to pay for their music again and they, in return, got a promise of quality and good karma.  It is almost incredulous that it worked.  For anyone who downloaded music 1999-2002, it did not appear that anyone would ever pay for music again.

For some reason the thing that sticks with me most about Steve Jobs is the Font.  Everyone takes it for granted, but if Steve Jobs had not gone overboard insisting that the original Mac had multiple fonts, I do not believe they would be as pervasive as they are on modern computers.  When Jobs did this, he must have appeared like a madman to his colleagues.  People had just recently been given the ability to type on a keyboard and see the corresponding characters appear on a screen.  Steve Wozniak’s Apple II design was the first computer to do this in 1977.  Now in 1979, engineers are going to spend inordinate amounts of time just to add the ability to choose the font that is displayed?  The time, money , and processing power sacrificed to create multiple fonts, at Jobs’ insistence, probably looked insane to everyone at Apple.  I believe it was things like this that got him ousted.  Looking back, however, the fact that the original Mac had multiple fonts, forced Microsoft and everyone else to include multiple fonts.  He injected calligraphy, or art, into early computing.  Who knows, decades later, how much this quirky little choice has impacted the world?  I am guessing greatly.

This is the fourth Vonnegut novel I have read.  It centers around a womanizing, but married Vietnam vet living in a post-war apocalyptic America.  His town is run almost entirely by Japanese corporations whose imported workforce does not mingle with the locals.  As with many Vonnegut novels, the scenes jump back and forth between past and present.  Vonnegut does this effortlessly.  Many authors would leave their readers too confused to follow along with his frequency of time travel.  The plot, however, seems kind of inconsequential throughout.  I never felt invested in any character or situation, but it was, oddly enough, fun to read.  The main character, Euguene Hartke, lives life as it comes.  He is often very fortunate or very unfortunate in his circumstances at different points in his life and the book seems to show that nothing he has done has influenced this.  Life seems to be one big crap shoot.  There are little political and social comments throughout the work that force a smile every few pages.  In the end the book seems to illustrate that it, just like life, has no purpose other than to try and appreciate it. I can only liken it to a psychedelic Seinfeld episode.

Apt pupil is another novella from Stephen King’s Different Season’s.  The book contains four novellas, so I have now read all four.  I was originally only planning on reading Shawshank Redemption and The Body because I saw both of their film adaptations and knew they did not seem likely to give me night terrors.

Apt Pupil definitely has its creepy moments, but I have come to realize that written descriptions are far more palatable than visual portrayals.  The book centers around Todd.  Todd is an all-American boy growing up in California.  He has been blessed with above-average looks, maturity, and intelligence.  Most would consider these traits blessings, but his intelligence and maturity seem to assist his decent into depravity.  The book is set in the 1970’s when some of the most despicable former Nazi leaders from World War II are still scattered around the globe with false identities.  Todd, an eighth grader at the start of the story, is fascinated with Nazis.  His hobby is researching and learning about every detail of their gruesome experiments and mass killings.  In doing research, he notices that Mr. Denker, an elderly man who lives in town, has a very strong resemblance to  a former concentration camp officer by the name of Kurt Dussander.  He gathers information until he is certain he has found the “blood fiend of Patin”.   In the book, Patin is referred to as a Nazi concentration camp in Poland.  Stephen King uses the name “Patin”, but it was presumably modeled after Mittelstein, which had a nearby aviation parts factory named “Patin” which likely utilized slave labor.

Todd pursuades Dussander to admit his true identity, and in exchange for Todd not revealing him to the world, forces Dussander to “entertain” him with death camp stories.  Todd even buys Dussander an SS costume uniform and forces him to wear it.  Eventually Dussander grows fond of the uniform and wears it when he has trouble sleeping.  Dussander had long ago abandoned his former life when he meets Todd.  Over the course of a few years, Todd re-awakens the “Nazi” in Dussander who begins murdering local winos he lures into his home with promises of a hot meal and a shower.  Despite appearing to be a model student-athlete by the end of high school,  Todd also becomes corrupted and takes up similar behavior.

One night Dussander has a heart attack while digging a grave in his crawlspace.  He calls Todd for help cleaning up his crime scene.  Dussander is admitted into the local hospital where he shares a room with a patient that has just broken his back falling from a ladder.  The broken back, represents the final straw in a man’s life that has seen most of his family taken from him earlier in his and life has taken away his belief in God.  The patient is soon revealed to be a former Patin prisoner.  He sees that God acts in very mysterious ways, recognizes Dussander, and contacts the authorities.  Dussander, knowing he has been discovered, makes his way to the hospital’s drug supply and poisons himself.

Todd is a very smart boy, but the detective handling the Dussander case is able to connect the dots.  He knows that Todd knew who Dussander was and suspects that Todd participated in some of the local murders.  In the end, Todd, the charming, all-American, salutatorian überkind, goes berserk with his rifle until he is killed by police.

I very much enjoyed all of the novellas in Different Seasons.  I am, however, going to switch to something a little more light-hearted for my next book.  I have started on Kurt Vonnegut’s Hocus Pocus.  I believe Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author.  In the appendix of Stephen King’s On Writing, there is a section on recommended books.  Hocus Pocus is one of them.