#99, "What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions"

"What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions"
by Randall Monroe

One of the most enjoyable books I've read all year. Monroe looks at the craziest scenarios and attempts to answer each in incisive and complete detail, usually to a disastrous end. His style is hilarious and very readable, as befits a scientist-turned-webcomic. The book was read by Will Wheaton, as well, which made it even better. This one is going to end up near the top of my favorites from the year.

98, "Murder on the Orient Express"

"Murder on the Orient Express"
by Agatha Christie

This is the first book from Agatha Christie I'd ever read. I was happy that this one was another that my wife Jessica read along with me. The version we had was an excellent reading by Kenneth Branagh, who stars in the new film adaptation (which I have not seen). Branagh's performance is truly awesome, and in some ways was more impressive and compelling than the actual material from the book. The mystery is pretty good, however, with a decent build of odd and seemingly unrelated happenings that come to a head at the conclusion well enough. I don't think it is a perfect novel. The conceit behind the final reveal is, to me, a little far-fetched, and I didn't buy it one hundred percent. Jessica guessed the ending, more or less, about halfway through. It was enjoyable, though--in no small part due to Branagh's performance, as I said--and I am glad to have finally gotten around to reading Agatha Christie.

#whatIreadin2017

#97, "What Teachers Make"

"What Teachers Make"by Taylor Mali

This book is an expansion of a now-famous poem by the same author, Taylor Mali. By expansion, I mean that he takes a line or two of the poem (you can see Mali perform it live here) and talks about the circumstances in his teaching career that precipitated the concept behind it. The poem itself is galvanizing for teachers, a call-to-arms, a demand for respect and recognition of one of the most impactful and important professions on the planet. The book is just as excellent, challenging, insightful and inspiring. Teachers--good and bad--really do make a difference, and Mali does a great job of explaining some reasons why.

#whatIreadin2017

#96, "How to Manage Your Money When You Don't Have Any"

"How to Manage Your Money When You Don't Have Any"
By Eric Wecks

What a slog. The majority of the book is concerned with the perils of consumer debt (duh) and what not to do, including ridiculous examples (don't spend $1,200 a month on shoes if you want to keep your home!). The few practical tips are generic and do not break new ground. He makes a good point about looking at a budget in terms of what you value--that is, you spend money based on your value system and should budget accordingly or change your values--but other than that Wecks does not have much that mattered to me. This one is definitely going near the bottom of my list for the year.

#91, "The Curious Case of the Missing Mammoth"

"The Curious Case of the Missing Mammoth"
by Ellie Hattie

Beautifully illustrated! The artwork is truly amazing and wonderful. The story is about a boy and a magical mammoth searching for the baby mammoth in a museum that has come alive. The story is fun, and there are lots of flaps with both story elements, as well as--slightly confusingly--trivia about the animals, art, and people that the characters find in the museum. I didn't care for the non-story parts, like the trivia, as it seemed that the book didn't really know whether to be educational or a magical mystery. One or the other would have made for a better, simpler and cleaner book. Fun reading it, though. And, again, the artwork is fantastic.

#89, "I Wish My Teacher Knew"

"I Wish My Teacher Knew: How One Question Can Change Everything For Kids"
by Kyle Schwartz

This book was inspired by a simple question in the author's 3rd-grade class, a question initially intended to get to know her class. She asked her students to finish the sentence "I wish my teacher knew...", and the results were funny, sobering, and occasionally shocking. Apparently the idea of the lesson went viral a couple of years ago. I had not heard of it before. The book has only a little to do with that lesson in particular. Instead, it uses the idea of things that students wish they could say but can't or don't and explores the different kinds of pain, turmoil, or abuse that children undergo. She talks about students who change schools, due to financial or family problems, deportation, military moves. She talks about students who live in such poverty that their only meals are from their schools. She talks about students who suffer abuse. She also talks about students who lift themselves and their classmates from their challenges, who meet and overcome obstacles through their own wills and with the help of their classroom community and, often, the love and support of a caring teacher. Real learning can happen in spite of terrible circumstances when children know there is at least one place they are safe, loved. The book isn't what I would call brilliant, but it is a forceful reminder of the importance of the classroom teacher, the impact--true, real, lifelong, everyday, life and death impact--that we as teachers can and do make when we make our classes safe places for children who need help, who need strength, who need community. Every child deserves love, deserves a chance to live and grow and learn. That is really the foundational object of teaching, and something I hope to cultivate in my own classroom every day.

#88, "The Courage to Teach"

"The Courage to Teach"
by Parker J. Palmer

This is a beautifully written book. Palmer has invested a substantial amount of thinking in the topics he talks about, and his depth of scholarship and carefully considered language is reflected in every weighted sentence. The text is part memoir, described in encounters, failures and successes along his career as an educator, and part prescriptive guide for teachers to rediscover their identities as humans and teachers, and ultimately for reforming the state of modern education for the good of all.

Palmer addresses three entities, each larger than the last: the teacher, communities of teachers, and finally teaching institutions. Teachers, he says, must connect, or reconnect, with themselves in order to really fulfill their identities as teachers. There is quite a bit of mystic and Buddhist terminology here, as he exhorts us to "listen to the inner teacher" and "find your truth." From a Christian perspective, I found that once I filtered his terminology into true statements, it made more sense for me. I agree with his premise, that we must live, or strive to live, "undivided" lives, though I think we disagree on what that means. I think, too, that once we--teachers especially, but really all humankind in general--once we have found our identities, we ought to live in community with others, and that real progress can be made once honest, open community is established. He ends by examining some aspects of educational reform, and presses the reader to live with integrity for what is right, even at the cost of prestige, power, or paycheck; a sentiment I stand behind myself. When integrity is gone, from the classroom, the pulpit, the home, we have become hollow men and hollow women. Anyway, I will not philosophize, even though the Mariana-level depth of the thoughts and writing in this book make it hard not to reciprocate with philisophication.

#87, "The Time Machine"

"The Time Machine"
by H. G. Wells

This book was published in 1895. I love the old-timey writing (most of the time). Wells has a fairly good sense of character and realism of tone, though the pacing and the propulsion of the book I felt was lacking. It is short enough that you can just hash through the story fairly quickly, as there is no character development, no subplots, and is realistically written as if some guy was telling a tale to his colleagues of something he just did. I suppose that's what Wells was going for. As a thought-experiment, then, it is interesting, but as a novel, it is not particularly compelling once you get past the time travelling bits. My favorite part of the novel was when the Time Traveller went 30 million years into the future. It's one thing to think about what the world will look like a hundred years from now, or even a thousand...but 30 million years! It would be a different place altogether. There is a lot of speculation on human development, a lot of evolutionistic theory and talk--though the Time Traveller admits that most of his theories end up being dead wrong and we aren't given any resolution as to what actually happens, which keeps the book from being preachy or prophetic, as you might expect from such a book today. It is low on plot and explanation. A fine read, but not a favorite, and, if I compare it to other of Wells' stories, certainly less compelling than The War of the Worlds. However, as I say, it is a worthy thought-experiment and in that it succeeds quite well.

#86, "Outliers"

"Outliers"
By Malcolm Gladwell

I have wanted to read this book for a few years now, though I'm not sure where I first heard of it. "Outliers" is about the concept of success; why some people find success and others do not, its accompanied complexities, and the hidden and sometimes surprising factors that influence a person's success. He looks at several groups in order to unpack and examine what contributes to success; Canadian hockey players, Korean pilots, Silicon valley executives, 1830's millionaires. His primary point is that success is based on factors out of our control as much, or more, than factors within our power. The place, the year, even the month we were born, the social class of our fathers, the power distribution of our cultures, all things that we have no influence over, have real and lasting impact on the paths our lives take. Success is a mixture of predetermined conditions, innate talent (though this is less important that we are often led to believe), hard--like, crazy insane hard--work, and opportunity. No one just falls into success. Gladwell's perspectives are fresh and insightful and are written in a great style that encourages one to continue reading. I really enjoyed the unusual settings of his examples, and even more how he tied each unusual example back into the larger picture. A masterful book on a subject I think most of us are interested to know more about.

Didn't Write Reviews, But

I finished two other books this month:

#84, "Creating the Constitution," a quick account of the circumstances and some of the debate surrounding the writing of the US Constitution
#85, "A Good Marriage," a Stephen King novella about the wife of a serial killer who must decide her future after she learns of her husband's deeds (the title is ironic)

The former was good but not exhaustive--bullet points only--which left me wanting more. The latter was also good, in the sense that it is well-written, but a little reaching in terms of plot.

I have been wanting to read a book called "Bioshock: Rapture," which is the pre-story to one of my favorite video games, for years, and I finally started it on Monday. Sadly, I stopped reading it after the first chapter, as both the writing as well as the narration were horrible. I don't have time to spend with mediocre material, really, and have moved on to H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine."