Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Title: Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

ISBN-10: 9780393329124
ISBN-13: 978-0393329124

After reading my first book by Mary Roach: Stiff, I was expecting a lot from this book.  Being the skeptic that I am, I had heard about this book through a couple different skeptical blogs and podcasts.  After hearing various reviews, I was anxious to dive into it.

In some ways the book followed the format of Stiff.  In this book Mary Roach relays various different encounters throughout the book in which she looks for evidence into life after death.  She delves into reincarnation, hauntings, mediums, ghost hunters, and near death experiences, along with a few other diversions.  Each encounter she writes about would delve into the subject's back story providing an interesting portait of the people she is writing about.

I have to say however, that I found Stiff much more interesting than Spook.  I think it might be due to the fact that I didn't really learn very much from Spook, whereas I learned a great deal from Stiff.  Don't get me wrong, I liked the book, and find Mary Roach to be a wonderfully talented and amusing author.  I just didn't gain a whole lot from this particular book.  If I had to give it a rating between one to five (and that is what I have to do on this blog), I'd give it a 3 out of 5.  As Kristie likes to say about many movies she watches: It was entertaining but forgettable.

Skippy Dies - Paul Murray

After reading Skippy Dies, I felt like I had spent the last week as an adolescent boy.  It was an interesting experience to say the least (given I'd never been in that position before).  Paul Murray does an excellent job of exploring life at an all-boys English boarding school, one that is on the cusp of becoming progressively more secular.  This book explores the impact that the death of a school-mate has on these boys, as well as the events leading up to the death.  This book manages to be touching, without pandering.  The reader doesn't get everything they want in the end, but that's a good thing.  I never like knowing exactly where the author is going to take me.  Although long, I read this book quickly and found many parts "laugh out loud" funny.  If you're looking for something that is both intellectually stimulating and a roaring good read, I recommend Skippy Dies.  It's a recent reading highlight!

4/5 Stars

Stanley Park - Timothy Taylor

I used to think that vacation reads had to be lighthearted romps.  Over time, I am finding this to be less true.  While they can be lighthearted, what is most important to me is a strong narrative.  Timothy Taylor's Stanley Park was a perfect choice for my trip to Doubtless Bay (New Zealand).  Taylor tackles what is obviously a very tough issue in this book: homelessness (which as a Canadian ex-pat, I am aware is a huge issue in Vancouver).  He does this with great sensitivity, pointing to the unique stories that each person has to tell and also their unique relationship to Stanley Park.

It's actually quite a hard book to describe as it has many layers.  Essentially, it is told from the perspective of a young chef (Jeremy) in Vancouver.  He is struggling to keep his restaurant afloat, while also dealing with this anthropologist father, who has been living in Stanley Park in an effort to tell the stories of its homeless inhabitants.  As the book progresses, Jeremy's struggle to keep his restaurant is juxtaposed against Jeremy's growing relationships with his father's homeless friends.  Through his cooking, Jeremy tries to stay connected to the land (i.e., through cooking local).  His father compares Jeremy's role to his own as his father is trying to understand how the inhabitants of Stanley Park are connected to the land.

While growing his restaurant helps to progress the story, it is Jeremy's interactions with his father's friends that makes this book something quite special.  An excellent book that compels and makes you think (and at points, makes you hungry).

5/5 Stars.  

A Meaningful Life - L.J. Davis

This was a really great read that I first heard about on the Kevin from Canada blog.  In many ways, it tells the story of the American Dream gone astray.  Ultimately, the main character (Lowell) becomes disgruntled with his current life, believing it not to be meaningful.  He sets out to create a meaningful life for himself by purchasing and "doing up" a house/manor in a very poor part of Brooklyn.  For this reason, there are interesting lessons about the challenges of gentrification.  Davis describes what can and does go wrong when Lowell obsesses over restoring one part of Brooklyn to its former glory.  In the process, Lowell himself becomes fascinated with the former owner of the manor, and seemingly seeks some of this man's notoriety in his own life.  The result is a darkly comic novel, with wry observations about the failure to live up to self-expectations.

For me, the really enjoyable part of this book came at the beginning.  There was simply so much humour infused in the early parts of the text, and the author's observations of character were extremely insightful.  I loved the way he described his father-in-law in the quote below.  You can absolutely picture people like him out there.

Apparently, he was meek and craven through and through, the kind of man who would always strive industriously to remain beneath any situation that might arise or sort of creep up on him, the kind of man who went through life continually ducking his head.  Lowell got the impression that if somebody finally came and told him it was time to go to the gas chamber, he would hop right into the truck, asking them to call him Leo.

All in all, this was an excellent book.  And the text is so timeless that I felt it could have been written yesterday (though it was actually first published in 1971).

4/5 Stars.