Recently Read--October

The most striking aspect of this books is the pictures the author employs in his telling of the tale. Actually, he doesn't employ the pictures. Rather, the pictures employ the story. Clearly Ransom Riggs (the author--Can that be his real name or is it a pen name? Certainly it's a bizarre name) has a love of old, haunting, black and white photographs. He must have spent years collecting and deciding which pictures would contribute to the story line. Because clearly the pictures came first--not the story, and I think that may be the problem I have with this book.

The story is contrived. It's not contrived as in its cliched. It's contrived, or perhaps derived, from the pictures Riggs has selected. He picked the pictures and then attempted to weave a story around those pictures. But the story reads.... like he did exactly that! The story is peculiar, like the children who occupy the house in his story. It's not believable as a story.  Fantasy, of course, requires a willingness to believe in the unbelievable, but Riggs doesn't make this believing easy. The world is not seamless. You can see the jagged, forced connections being stitched between the pictures. 

The story, in short, doesn't live up to its pictures.  The pictures are incredible--so eery, so creepy, so ominous. The story is meant to be these things, too. But it's not. It's just peculiar and lacking in seamless design. 

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Another book I finished recently is Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. (Rainbow Rowell--another truly bizarre name. They must be pen names, right?) This book is a bit high-schooly. It is a romance--albeit not your everyday, boy-meets-girl and instantly they are a dream couple, romance. 

I loved this book, and I think it's because the coupling of the two main characters was surprising, and as a consequence, really sweet. The "getting together" is painfully awkward and slow--and hence believable. These are not two kids who expect to find "love." They are loners, neither of whom are looking for and thinking about finding a significant other. 

There is also a mystery aspect to the book. Eleanor's family situation is sketchy at best--downright scary at worst. I read on simply to find out if Eleanor would make it out of that house alive.

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This book was a page turner. The main characters are rich and entitled, but you soon grow to like them, despite this. It's a lifestyles of the privileged story--only all goes awry. 

What I enjoyed was trying to figure out what was truth and what was lie--right from page one. I didn't think it was predictable until about half way through the book. The first half of the book definitely had me turning those pages as I tried to puzzle out what had really taken place on the island. The story is sad -- but it's a satisfying sad, I think.

I recommend this one.

I recently read The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.  Its premise really isn't novel.  The gist is that when we focus deeply on something, when we repeatedly work at it, when we throw our passion into it, we can excel in our chosen domain at an accelerated pace.

Of course.

Still, the book has me thinking. It's causing me to acknowledge and question my deeply-rooted beliefs about talent, intelligence and skill.

• On a conscious level I know that any skill can be honed by working at it. 
• On an unconscious level I believe that some people pick up skills more quickly than others, and this is a pre-determined, genetic thing.
• On a conscious level I know that intelligence is worked at; that those people who read, study, and practice are the ones who gain knowledge most quickly and thoroughly, and are the ones who excel at taking standardized tests and landing A's in school.
• On an unconscious level I believe that intelligence is inherited. Some people are smart; some people aren't, and there isn't much you can do to change that.
• On a conscious level I believe that I can train my body to excel at whatever I decide is worthy of such a pursuit.
• On an unconscious level I believe there are born athletes and born troopers, and that I am a trooper, devoid of inherited athletic prowess.

This book has made me really question my unconscious beliefs about talent.

For example, I consider my husband very intelligent. I believe he is superior to me in this intelligence, and that I could never match his perfect GREs, his undergraduate degrees in physics and religion (the two of which combined illustrate the range of his interests/ability), his doctorate from Harvard, his thorough knowledge of pretty much everything from A-Z.
In short, he is smart.
He is smarter than me.

Or take my friend, Angela. Ange is a killer athlete, and she always has been. When we were tykes she dominated the swimming pool. Dominated. In high school she did cross-country and track, and though they weren't her focus, she dominated there as well. When in college she swam Division I, and dominated there, and when she graduated she ran her first marathon with limited training and she qualified for Boston on this first time out.
She is a natural. gifted.
She is more gifted than me.

BUT.
What if Andy is intelligent and Ange is a killer athlete because from day one they have viewed themselves as intelligent and an athlete respectively, and therefore put in the time--the focused practice--to achieve this?

According to this book what happens is this:

• You have a vision of yourself inspired by something--like watching Tiger Woods on TV, or seeing someone perform Fur Elise on the piano who is your same age, or whatever--and you decide: I want that for me. 
• You go into deep practice. You don't just practice; you get into this meditative state where you slow things down and divide the skill into its various parts, memorize each part through constant repetition, and then emerge, skill born. Your learning is accelerated exponentially when you achieve this focused state.
• You develop passion. You want this thing for yourself and you continually go into deep practice to achieve it. You have a vision of yourself that is long term. You are a STUDENT. You are a SWIMMER. You are a PIANIST.  This vision sustains you and you aren't deterred from your mission.
• As you enter this state, the focused learning state, the myelin in your brain wraps tightly around the ignited nerve fibers, insulating them and allowing electric impulses to travel more speedily and smoothly. The more the skill is practiced, the more myelin wraps around the nerve fiber, and the more rote the skill becomes. So it's all about myelin. Apparently when they dissected Einstein's brain there was a TON of myelin in there. At the time they didn't know why. Now they do. He myelinated--like incessantly.

So, perhaps, Andy believed he was an intelligent from an early age, and he learned how to go into "deep practice" to realize this truth. What I have noticed over the years is that when Andy doesn't know something, he will slow things down and focus--sometimes for days--until he gets it. Do this for forty years straight, and well, no wonder he is Wonder Boy. He has myelinated the shit out of his brain. It's not that he is more innately talented than others; it's that he has entered this state repeatedly since he was a wee one.

I didn't do that.

Or with Ange. She got the signal she was an athlete early on. She worked at it. and worked at it. and worked at it. She myleinated when doing the fly, when running on the track. Ange is really strong, and when you look at her you think, Wow, she inherited a seriously athletic build. But then  you look at her parents. They are small. PETITE. Ange's mom is smaller than me, and that's saying something. Her genes didn't make her strong--I don't think, anyway. It was the signal she gave to her body from a young age. Develop here. Move here. Myelinate now. Her body and mind adapted to her vision of herself, to her constant deep practice.

It's interesting to watch my kids in this light. Jordan loves to draw. And she's good. I always thought this was a gift. She inherited the "art" gene, I'd say. Now I see that she is good because she spends so much time in deep practice. She can spend hours drawing a flower. She draws it again and again until she gets it right. She's making myelin, and it's wrapping around nerve fibers so that each time she draws that flower, she does it with greater ease, accuracy and skill. Conversely, Jordan is not creating much myelin around playing soccer. On the soccer field she is somewhere else. She chats with her friends; she looks at her feet. She follows the ball but doesn't get into the action. This isn't because she isn't an athlete. If it were up to genes, she certainly would be a soccer player. Her father and uncle are awesome at the game. But she hasn't gone into deep practice around soccer. She likes soccer. But she doesn't love it. Until she develops passion for it, until she goes outside each morning to work on it, until she gets some myelin wrapping going on in soccer land, she won't achieve it.

What does this all mean?
The cool thing about myelin is that it can grow throughout your lifetime. It grows with greater speed and efficiency when you are younger, but it grows as an adult nevertheless.


We can't change our genes.
But that doesn't matter. We have more power over our abilities than we have been led to believe.

The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin

Nancy Werlin writes young adult suspense fiction. Her best book, in my opinion, was Double Helix, a thriller about a young man who realizes he carries a very interesting and somewhat scandalous genetic history.  I also liked The Killer's Cousin, which dealt with a little girl capable of attempting murder. The Rules of Survival was not quite as good as those, but I still enjoyed it. It's about three kids growing up in South Boston with an extremely unstable, evil, mother. It was a page turner, like most of Werlin's books. I wanted to know when and how the kids would break free of their mom, and so I couldn't stop reading.

Still, it wasn't a completely satisfying read because the characters were not fully developed.I didn't quite understand what made the mother so crazy. I wished for more explanation on that. She was off her rocker but didn't have an identifiable mental illness. The kids weren't colorful enough either--just kids trying to survive.

I did like that Matt, the protagonist (the oldest child) comes to understand that he, like his mother, is capable of great evil. This is something Werlin explores in her writing; that even children have the capacity to commit horrid acts. Humans are also capable of great goodness (as witnessed in the character of Murdoch, who helps the kids), but most humans need a significant push to do great goodness, and spend most of their lives complacent.

If you like suspenseful, dramatic, realistic, and raw fiction, this book might be for you.