Around this time of the year many people rush into print or go on line or in front of the TV camera with their pronouncements about the 10 best books, best movies, best hamburgers or whatever, of the past year. I seem to have acquired a reputation as a reader and get asked for my ideas about books worth reading, so I'll have a go at compiling my own very short list. I could use posts on this blog to jog my memory but I don't need to because the outstanding books are unforgettable. In approximate order - only approximate because they are in different categories - here are my top five books:
The better angels of our nature, Historical social and behavioural science, by Steven Pinker
Bring up the bodies, historical novel about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn by Hillary Mantel
Joseph Anton, a memoir of life under a Fatwa by Salman Rushdie
Mr g, a metaphysical novel about creation by Alan Lightman
A man of parts, a fictional biography of HG Wells, by David Lodge
I'll add an outstanding novel that I've reread this year for the second time, Cutting for Stone, about the intertwined lives of people with roots in India but living in Addis Ababa, by Abraham Verghese. I've discussed almost all of these books in posts on my blog I could add a dozen or two dozen more, some light, some heavyweight. Alexander McCall Smith's latest episode in the life of Isobel Dalhousie, editor of the Journal of Applied Ethics and her family and friends in Edinburgh flagellates all my nostalgia for that lovely city; Neil Turok's Massey Lectures on cosmology and much else stretched my mind comfortably until he left me struggling out of my depth in the last few pages of the final lecture. Ian McEwan's latest novel, Sweet Tooth is up to his usual excellent standard, confirms his place as one of the best, perhaps the very best, of contemporary British novelists. Annabel Lyon's follow-up after her prize-winning novel about Aristotle's life during the period when he was tutor to Alexander the Great is another very good novel about Aristotle's daughter Pythias, giving the author a chance to ventilate about the status of girls and women in Hellenist Greece 3 centuries before our era - not much different from the status of girls and women in modern Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. JK Rowling's very adult novel, A Casual Vacancy, is an excellent social - and political - study of almost uniformly unpleasant people in a small English town, a dark but believable story that focuses mainly on the youths of the town, randy, sexually active, amoral, unprincipled. Only one character seems to possess a spark of human decency, and she comes to a bad end. I wish JK had created at least one character like the youngsters who give me hope for the future.
There is much more to say about several of my top 5 + 1. Steven Pinker provides good evidence to support his claim that violence among humans has declined in the past 500 years. He attributes this to increasing empathy of humans for one another. I've reflected a great deal on changes in human values during my lifetime; some of my reflections and speculation about reasons for changes in values have been subjects for posts on this blog. My conclusions, although tentative, accord with Pinker's. I could put it even more simply. As knowledge grows, so does empathy. Pinker's book is a very important contribution to our understanding of the human condition, and offers some guidelines on ways we could enhance the human condition further. Unfortunately it's unlikely that any action towards this end will materialize. National leaders have other priorities than reducing violence and enhancing empathy, and the slightest hint that achieving such aims might require investment by what these leaders describe as "taxpayers" probably dooms the suggestion before it is even made. As I wait impatiently for Hillary Mantel's third novel in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and his times flashes of memories from Wolf Hall, the first volume, and Bring up the Bodies, the second volume, bubble to the surface. These are two superb novels, both worthy recipients of their Booker Prizes. They are much more than historical novels. They are political, psychological studies as well as meticulously researched histories of Tudor times in England. I'm sorry I gave away my copy of Wolf Hall, because I'd like to reread it, even though with my short remaining lifetime I probably shouldn't allow myself the luxury, as I've just done for instance with Cutting for Stone, and will doubtless do again before long with other much-loved books.
I got much more from my second reading of Cutting for Stone no doubt because it was more leisurely, more reflective than first time. I noticed among other things the son's relationship to his father, much like my relationship to my father, and the subtle yet profound differences between Ethiopians and Eritreans. And the profound differences between the front-line New York hospital where Marion Stone works, and the luxurious Boston hospital where his father works. I am more convinced than ever that this novel will become a classic.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
2012
Christmas morning is as good a time as any to reflect on the year that is about to end. 2012 has been a sad and discouraging year
for many people all over the world, but I am encouraged by the youngsters
whose company I enjoy often enough to keep me going, like the medical students whom I encounter
occasionally in seminars. These students, and my grandchildren, reinfect me periodically with enough youthful enthusiasm to sustain me. I am 86
years old now, well past the average life expectancy of my birth cohort, and I
am contented as I approach the end of a long and thoroughly enjoyable, worthwhile and
interesting life. My beloved Wendy has been dead just over two years, and today
I would be happy to follow her, except that I remain curious about what my
grandchildren will do with their lives. All three are interesting young adults and full of promise. I have an incentive to live another 10 years to see
which direction their lives take, despite reminders
from my aging body that various organs and tissues are wearing out.
I'm curious about and interested in much else. Theoretical physics and the Higgs boson, for instance. I got seriously interested in theoretical physics in my last year at school and first year at university and I've stayed in touch by occasional immersion in the works of Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, and others who can clarify this arcane discipline for amateurs. I understand why the large hadron collider at CERN has enough reason to justify the enormous expense of its construction because it has proved the existence of the Higgs boson, and I can understand that the Higgs boson is the essential keystone holding together all the other particles that comprise every atom in the universe. I can understand the concept of the quantum computer and why it is orders of magnitude more powerful and versatile than the digital computer on which I'm tapping out this note to post on my blog. The theoretical physicists at the Perimeter Institute of Waterloo University say quantum computers are only a few years away from being a practical reality. Perhaps that's the ultimate in Good News to have emerged from 2012, which I have to agree with many pundits, has been a bad year on the whole.
As I tap out this note I'm listening for the second time this Christmas to a performance of Handel's Messiah. I resonate to the aria "Why do the nations so furiously rage together," and I wonder whether humans will ever learn how to settle disputes by amicable discussion rather than by killing and maiming each other. Today the death toll in Syria has reached 45,000 according to latest UN estimates, and there is no sign of resolution to this ultimately futile conflict.
Christmas Day is turning out as it should, bright sun shining down on crisp dazzling white snow, no wind, a day when it's good to be alive.
I'm curious about and interested in much else. Theoretical physics and the Higgs boson, for instance. I got seriously interested in theoretical physics in my last year at school and first year at university and I've stayed in touch by occasional immersion in the works of Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, and others who can clarify this arcane discipline for amateurs. I understand why the large hadron collider at CERN has enough reason to justify the enormous expense of its construction because it has proved the existence of the Higgs boson, and I can understand that the Higgs boson is the essential keystone holding together all the other particles that comprise every atom in the universe. I can understand the concept of the quantum computer and why it is orders of magnitude more powerful and versatile than the digital computer on which I'm tapping out this note to post on my blog. The theoretical physicists at the Perimeter Institute of Waterloo University say quantum computers are only a few years away from being a practical reality. Perhaps that's the ultimate in Good News to have emerged from 2012, which I have to agree with many pundits, has been a bad year on the whole.
As I tap out this note I'm listening for the second time this Christmas to a performance of Handel's Messiah. I resonate to the aria "Why do the nations so furiously rage together," and I wonder whether humans will ever learn how to settle disputes by amicable discussion rather than by killing and maiming each other. Today the death toll in Syria has reached 45,000 according to latest UN estimates, and there is no sign of resolution to this ultimately futile conflict.
Christmas Day is turning out as it should, bright sun shining down on crisp dazzling white snow, no wind, a day when it's good to be alive.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
How do values change?
The latest school massacre in the USA - 20 little children and 6 of their teachers shot in cold blood by a deranged 20-year old kid in a quiet town in Connecticut - has justifiably sparked more agonized discussion than any of the previous school massacres in recent years. It's been horrific enough to convert some gun-loving law makers to a more rational view of the need to restrain access to lethal weapons, and to show in stark reality the insanity of a gun lobby spokesman who asserted that if all the kindergarten teachers were armed, they would be able to defend themselves, or better yet, 'take out' deranged attackers before they had a chance to perpetrate a massacre. The absurdity of this argument is so obvious nobody but a psychopath would be taken in by it - and nobody but a psychopath would offer such an argument in the first place.
Unfortunately the 'right to bear arms' is so deeply engrained in American values that the nation as a whole isn't likely to change its ways. The moment of truth that Wendy and I experienced in Burlington, Vermont in 1964 when we discovered that we alone among all those present at a large dinner party of seemingly civilized staff people at the University of Vermont didn't keep a loaded handgun in our home, played a part in our decision to reject the USA as a suitable place to raise our children, to choose Edinburgh rather than Baltimore for the next phase of our family's development; that decision was entirely based on values. We simply didn't see the 'right to bear arms' as relevant to our way of life. Most Americans seem to regard it as profoundly important: an integral aspect of survival strategy, or akin to religious beliefs, or both. There were other reasons why we turned our backs on the USA in the mid 1960s, but the gun culture, the resort to guns as the best way to solve problems, the last resort in all other civilized nations but the first for many Americans, was a powerfully persuasive reason for Wendy and me to leave behind the higher salary, material comforts, and career opportunities, to embrace instead the rugged, more spartan and financially constrained conditions of academic and social life in Edinburgh.
If indeed the American people are more hospitable this week than they previously were to the notion of some restraint on untrammelled access to assault rifles, rifles fitted with grenade launchers forsooth, then this will be a vivid illustration of how suddenly societal values can change. It's usually a slower process, but there have been past examples of sudden value changes when a single event shocks an entire population into awareness that past values and behaviours must change. The Earl of Shaftesbury and other social reformers in 19th century England achieved success in the campaign to abolish child labour in factories and mines, but it was a slow, incremental process. In Canada the DNA evidence that proved the innocence of David Milgaard, and the Montreal student massacre had similar success (although the latter, sadly, has proven vulnerable to the ideological blinkers and demagoguery of the present government). It's too soon to say with confidence that Americans have been shocked into a common-sense attitude towards guns by last week's massacre, but present evidence and pronouncements by previously committed supporters of the 'right' to bear arms do suggest that a sea-change in societal values might be feasible in the USA. If this does happen, it will be interesting to see whether it has any beneficial impact on the Canadian Conservative government's lassaiz-faire values and legislative actions regarding access to guns.
Unfortunately the 'right to bear arms' is so deeply engrained in American values that the nation as a whole isn't likely to change its ways. The moment of truth that Wendy and I experienced in Burlington, Vermont in 1964 when we discovered that we alone among all those present at a large dinner party of seemingly civilized staff people at the University of Vermont didn't keep a loaded handgun in our home, played a part in our decision to reject the USA as a suitable place to raise our children, to choose Edinburgh rather than Baltimore for the next phase of our family's development; that decision was entirely based on values. We simply didn't see the 'right to bear arms' as relevant to our way of life. Most Americans seem to regard it as profoundly important: an integral aspect of survival strategy, or akin to religious beliefs, or both. There were other reasons why we turned our backs on the USA in the mid 1960s, but the gun culture, the resort to guns as the best way to solve problems, the last resort in all other civilized nations but the first for many Americans, was a powerfully persuasive reason for Wendy and me to leave behind the higher salary, material comforts, and career opportunities, to embrace instead the rugged, more spartan and financially constrained conditions of academic and social life in Edinburgh.
If indeed the American people are more hospitable this week than they previously were to the notion of some restraint on untrammelled access to assault rifles, rifles fitted with grenade launchers forsooth, then this will be a vivid illustration of how suddenly societal values can change. It's usually a slower process, but there have been past examples of sudden value changes when a single event shocks an entire population into awareness that past values and behaviours must change. The Earl of Shaftesbury and other social reformers in 19th century England achieved success in the campaign to abolish child labour in factories and mines, but it was a slow, incremental process. In Canada the DNA evidence that proved the innocence of David Milgaard, and the Montreal student massacre had similar success (although the latter, sadly, has proven vulnerable to the ideological blinkers and demagoguery of the present government). It's too soon to say with confidence that Americans have been shocked into a common-sense attitude towards guns by last week's massacre, but present evidence and pronouncements by previously committed supporters of the 'right' to bear arms do suggest that a sea-change in societal values might be feasible in the USA. If this does happen, it will be interesting to see whether it has any beneficial impact on the Canadian Conservative government's lassaiz-faire values and legislative actions regarding access to guns.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Annual Report 2012
Adhering to a family custom that dates back over 50 years, I composed a brief report of the highlights of 2012, illustrated with photos and a picture of the cover of a book that's coming out in February 2013. I posted this to 35-40 people, and emailed roughly 200 more. The pictures didn't come through in the email version, so here they are again in this blog post:
Annual Report
Annual Report
I hope 2012 has been a happy year for you and all your
family.
It’s been a good year for me. One unexpected happy event was announced in a
phone call in late May. On a day of many irritating phone calls the phone rang yet
again. “Call display” revealed that a government official was calling;
fortunately I didn’t snarl but answered politely. The call came from Rideau
Hall, home of the Governor General of Canada; his secretary was calling to
inform me that I was to be admitted as an Officer of the Order of Canada, in
recognition of my contributions to public health and epidemiology. This led to
much rejoicing, but also sadness that my beloved Wendy wasn’t here to share the
glory. The public announcement came on June 30 and the investiture followed on
23 November.
 |
| John celebrating at the investiture, November 23 2012 |
No exotic travels in 2012, just two short out of town trips. I flew to Waterloo on Bearskin Airlines with
its evocative list of destinations in remote parts of this huge province of
Ontario, to perform for this year’s intake of MPH students; and I flew to
Toronto where Karen Trollope Kumar met me, drove me to Hamilton whence we had
two trips to the Shaw Festival Theatre in Niagara on the Lake.
Finally, another book has my name on the cover and the title
page:
Several years ago I signed a contract with Oxford University
Press to write a descendent of Public Health
and Human Ecology. Aware that I’ve fallen behind the growing edge of public
health sciences, I recruited Frank White and Lorann Stallones as co-authors.
Then Wendy fell ill. For over a year I was preoccupied caring for her, and for
many months after she died I was mourning her, in a state of mind akin to
depression. I’d written first drafts of 2 of the 4 chapters I had originally
agreed to contribute, and left it to Frank and Lorann to close the gaps. I
think they have done a splendid job and the finished work will come out early
in 2013.
My warmest seasonal greetings to you and yours, as ever,
John
11A/300 Queen Elizabeth
Drive, Ottawa, Ontario CANADA K1S 3M6
jmlast@uottawa.ca or oldwhitebeard@gmail.com http://lastswords.blogspot.com
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Official photos of the investiture
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The Governor General, His Excellency the Honourable David Johnston, congratulating me after presenting the insignia of Officer of the Order of Canada
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