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 What happens when we make a choice? How do we decide which brand of jam we want in the supermarket, or what to do when we’re piloting a crashing plane and have no instructions on how to save the day? Jonah Lehrer takes a look at how we make decisions. He examines which parts of our brains do what and how we fall into traps based on how our brains are constructed. Using clear examples and fascinating, well-documented facts, Lehrer examines how we can use all of our instincts as well as our rational minds to make the best choices for ourselves.
This book was totally and completely fascinating. I didn’t really know what to expect from it except that I’d like to know more about how my brain works. Lehrer seriously delivers on his promise. His book is not too heavy on the science and I’m sure real brain function is a lot more complicated, but he distilled it down into a series of examples and explanations that I could understand and relate to what he was saying. I kept exclaiming over how true various parts were and had to read them aloud to my husband so he could get them too. I also made him read it right after I did because I just found it all so fascinating.
Let me take an example that relates directly to me. In one of the chapters, Lehrer discusses how children are taught and how the education system has it somewhat backwards. Kids are praised for their intelligence, not for their efforts. He cites studies that show that children who are praised for working hard do consistently work hard and take on tougher challenges, while kids who are praised for being smart are so afraid of failing and proving that praise wrong that they choose to do easier tasks in order to maintain their projection of intelligence. Lehrer says that this is wrong because our brain learns by making mistakes – screw up once or twice, and you’ve learned something. If you don’t screw up, you don’t improve. This is so true because all my life, I’d been praised for my intelligence, and once my intelligence didn’t cut it, I felt like a failure, just as he describes. Working hard solved the problem, but I didn’t think that I had to – after all, I was smart. Mistakes are important and that’s not something we learn.
He also explains why gambling is so addictive, why Deal or No Deal is actually a fascinating insight into how the brain works, why political pundits are often wrong (and how some of them manage to be correct), and even helps to explain the credit card debt problem, as apparently our brains have a smaller sense of loss when using plastic than when using cash, so the reward of buying something seems proportionally more important. The endnotes provide plenty of references to the studies he cites, and he looks at real life examples of decision makers who rely on both instinct (their emotional brain) and conscious thought to make choices. He examines when each are important and emphasizes the importance of taking time out to mull on important decisions, as your unconscious brain will be busily figuring out the problem for you.
Mostly, Lehrer encourages us to think, to question our beliefs, understand when we make mistakes, and try to consider everything from all angles. Sometimes it’s best to rely on your feelings, like when you’re choosing jam or playing football, and sometimes it’s best to consider why you feel that way, like when you’re choosing a political party or faced with an out of control forest fire. Overall, The Decisive Moment was compelling reading. I learned so much and I can’t imagine anyone not gaining from this book.
This title is known as How We Decide in the USA. I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
Apparently deciding to read less means I read more. I read 28 books this month. I know, I was surprised too, but I’m not complaining as I still got everything done that I needed to do this month. I read a lot of shorter and lighter books to balance out my heavier reading, so I think that’s what happened. Please ignore my efforts to fit in the books that fit more than one category!
Historical Fiction
- The Dark Rose, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
- The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, Lauren Willig
- The Island of the Swans, Ciji Ware
Fantasy
Women’s Fiction
- Saffron Dreams, Shaila Abdullah
- Roses, Leila Meacham
- Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie (with lots of romance)
Literary Fiction
YA
- Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
Paranormal Romance
- Legend of the White Wolf, Terry Spear
Historical Romance
Classics
Non-fiction
I also reviewed The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England. That contest is still open if you want to head over and enter!
I have trouble choosing a favorite this month, but I think it will have to be The Children’s Book. It was just such a thorough, absorbing read. Honorable mentions, of course, go to Persepolis, The House of the Mosque, and A Suitable Boy. I also loved The Decisive Moment and I think everyone should read it; that review is coming up later this week!
As far as I’m concerned, I’m doing a fair job diversifying my reading. I didn’t stick too much in any one genre, barring what I call “literary” fiction. I don’t like that label, but not sure what to replace it with. I didn’t do very well adding in more classics, but in March I’m going to fix that. Tasha from Heidenkind’s Hideaway and I are going to have a classics-themed month and I aim to read at least four classics.
This month, though, I’m making a goal to read more authors of color. I’ve taken a look at my TBR pile and the authors are there, it’s just a matter of prioritizing those. I haven’t actually decided on which big book I want to tackle this month. I think it’s East of Eden to join in on the group read, but it mostly depends on how many review books I can read before I head home on the 11th!
How was your reading month?
 Faith heads to Canada in an attempt to find her ex-boyfriend, Hilson, who stole her father’s research paper, and to figure out what has her father so excited. Cameron is there looking for two missing partners. Thanks to a mix-up in their hotel, Faith ends up in his room after he’s just taken a shower. Nothing happens, but they realize they’re heading in the same direction. Almost immediately, they’re thrown into a confusing world of werewolves and people intent on eliminating them. As their lives change drastically, Faith and Cameron find themselves falling in love.
I really enjoyed Terry Spear’s last offering in this series, so I was really looking forward to this one. I read very few romances set in the present, but the werewolf elements liven these books up. I love Spear’s lupus garou universe, even though the characters were new to me in this one. Both Faith and Cameron are bitten and their first transformations are really interesting. Cameron for one doesn’t even realize he’s a werewolf at first; he thinks he’s just dreaming but is confused by the fact that everything is the same when he supposedly wakes up. I’m sure it would be difficult to realize that you’re a werewolf when you don’t even believe that they exist!
The romance was sweet, too. I thought Cameron and Faith were a little too hasty when it came to jumping into bed, but they definitely bonded over their shared predicament. I liked Cameron in particular; he was an extremely compelling character and I could believe in his feelings for Faith. I felt for her, especially given her ex-boyfriend’s bad behavior, but he was just that much more appealing. The secondary characters were not too detailed, but I was given enough that I wouldn’t mind reading their stories, too.
Legend of the White Wolf and all of Terry Spear’s books would be great choices for paranormal romance fans, especially those who are tired of always reading about vampires!
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Legendary food critic Pierre Arthens is dying, but he doesn’t want his family or friends at his deathbed. No, he wants to isolate the food that he needs to taste one more time before he goes. And so he searches his memories of his life, trying to find that moment which is eluding his grasp. Meanwhile, his friends and family reflect on him, his attitude towards them, and their feelings, and it becomes clear that this book isn’t really about food, after all.
One thing is certain; this book will make you very, very hungry. Unfortunately I don’t have it with me as I’m writing this review, but its descriptions of the food that Pierre has eaten are lush and amazing, and he eats everything from huge rustic meals to the most refined fare at restaurants. I was wondering if food critics really examined their food in such detail, but then I figured they must. I enjoy Barbery’s writing, assuming my translation is fluid, and so reading this book was very pleasant for me.
I didn’t think it was as good as The Elegance of the Hedgehog, though. There were no insights that I felt applied to my own life outside the book, if that makes sense, aside from maybe showing love towards people that I love, which I think most normal people do anyway. Pierre’s character just never rose above his neglect of family and friends in search of food, and it becomes clear that he’s deprived himself of all the love that he could have had, and deprived his children and wife of a proper husband and father. He’s extremely self-absorbed and the only thing he really loves is food. His realizations all came a little too late for me to appreciate them, and I found I enjoyed the other characters’ chapters more than his, even if I did enjoy reading about his culinary delights. I could really feel for the other characters and it was fun to see a few from Hedgehog turn up to talk about Pierre, since he’s the one that dies early on in that book.
The Gourmet is so short, however, that it’s probably worth a read even if you don’t like Pierre. I’d definitely recommend it for food lovers in particular, and for anyone who has already enjoyed Barbery’s work.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 J.D. Salinger’s death this week has saddened me. He was 91, and I know we’d all be fortunate to live that long, but it’s still sad to know that a powerful voice has gone out. I’ve only ever read The Catcher in the Rye of his works, though I’d like to read more (and always have, but somehow haven’t yet). The rest of this post may contain spoilers, so if you haven’t read it yet, skip down to the questions in bold.
I first read Catcher in my junior year of high school, when I was a pretty good example of a teenager convinced that everyone in the world is a phony. My best friend at the time was studying abroad in Germany for the year, my first boyfriend had got together with someone else, and in general I felt sort of emotionless, trapped in this world I didn’t really want. I hated high school. Holden Caulfield didn’t save me, that took college, but he brought a new perspective into my life, and as a result I loved the book. I got a copy of my own, intending to reread it.
It took four years and a children’s lit class for me to read it again, and I was worried about my reaction. I was older and I’d been through a lot. In fact, my entire life changed in those four years, so much so that it was virtually unrecognizable. My brother had died in the most horrific six month period of any of our lives, I had a steady boyfriend and spent summers in England, and I lived in a different state with different friends and different needs. I wasn’t a teenager and certainly not one that wanted to rage against the world. And it was from that perspective I read the book, and I still loved it even when almost everyone in the class couldn’t stand Holden and his complaining. Why? Because his brother died too. His brother died, and it messed with him, and I could understand him in a totally different way. I could see how it could change his life and make him a cynic and a whiner, because I could have slid that way myself. I could see why he wanted so badly to protect his sister – and all children – more than ever. I would bet that no one else in that class had ever lost a sibling and they couldn’t put themselves in the book as easily as I could then. It astonished me that the class didn’t get it. Of course, every book is different for every reader, but no one picked up on what a difference that death made. The book didn’t change, but I did, and the entire book became much, much more than it was.
I also wanted to say here that maybe I was wrong, but honestly, I still really believe that was the drive behind Holden’s behavior, and so I can’t bring myself to.
Has a book ever changed for you as your perspectives on life changed? Have you ever felt radically different about a book than everyone else?
 It’s with great pleasure that I bring to you one of my favorite authors, Edith Wharton, for my turn on the Classics Circuit!
Undine Spragg manages to convince her parents to move from Apex to New York City, where she’s hoping to make a brilliant entrance into society with a rich husband. Undine is a deadly combination of beautiful, selfish, and ignorant, capable of turning herself into what almost any man desires the most. She is horribly spoiled and incapable of understanding the consequences of her actions, but they are all too clear to the reader as she storms through the lives of people who wish to believe better of her.
Undine is one nasty character. I couldn’t believe how selfish she was. And Wharton doesn’t pull her punches, she lets us feel the impact that Undine has by focusing on several other characters whose lives she irrevocably changes, damages, or destroys. One of the most heartbreaking passages occurs at the end and I could really see how much damage she’d done, and how much more she wanted to do.
I thought it was interesting, though, that she can be seen as completely a product of her society. Even though her father originally was poor and became rich when she was a child, she was never denied anything, and thus sees no reason to ever be denied anything. Her first society husband is forced to work at a career he hates and is bad at to support her extravagances even though she also receives an allowance from her father, and she still complains that he isn’t getting enough. But he never tells her about his hardships, just like her father never told her where the money came from, so she still doesn’t seem to understand. At times, she reminded me of a beautiful, vapid child, incapable of truly understanding the world in which she lives. She doesn’t seem to realize that she’s hurting people. She focuses constantly on the injustice done to her and on the jealousy she feels towards other women who she sees as having more. She has an education, but it seems to have taught her absolutely nothing. I had to wonder if Wharton saw society women as children given that she chose to portray this woman so much like one.
And so Undine leaves male carnage in her wake as she moves on to the next husband and the next husband. I despised her and felt bad for her husbands and child even as I was fascinated by what she’d do next. As usual I loved the portrait of society through Undine, and all the people wasting their time with niceties and social frivolity and missing out on the big picture. I especially felt for Undine’s first husband, Ralph, who sees her as something pure and different and malleable, only to realize that Undine wanted to mold herself after the people he found to be fakes. He seemed to get to the core of the society in which he could not flourish because he recognized how superficial it all was. He sees the cracks, and through him, Undine’s other husbands, and through despising Undine, I could see the cracks too.
While this isn’t toppling The Age of Innocence from its throne as my favorite Wharton (nor Ethan Frome from #2 slot and yes, I do have a hierarchy, is that odd?), I’m definitely glad I read it. The Custom of the Country was such an interesting book and it made me think about relations between men and women, how they were, and how they’ve changed.
 Two boys, Julian Cain and Tom Wellwood, are wandering around a half-completed museum in London when they come across a third boy, Philip Warren, drawing the museum’s sculptures. He has fled from his family and his life in the horrible pottery factories, and the Wellwood family takes him in and finds him a place with Benedict Fludd, a strange and temperamental sculptor. At first glance, all of these families appear happy, particularly the large Wellwood family with successful children’s book author Olive Wellwood and her banker husband Humphry at its head. As the years go by, however, and the children grow up and learn the realities of the world, they understand that their childhood was an illusion as paper thin as Olive’s fairy tales.
I loved this book. I don’t think everyone will love it; it’s a long, dense book, more a portrait of family and art than anything with a plot. Although, to be honest, I didn’t think the descriptions of pots were as boring as everyone says, and there weren’t as many as I’d expected, either. I loved the intricate detail and the thought that went into this book. I felt it was such a gorgeous picture of late Victorian England, and Edwardian England, and even, heartbreakingly, World War I era England. It was a full picture of a society both different from our own and becoming our own. Honestly, I could live in this book’s atmosphere, even if I wouldn’t particularly want to live in a time where options for women were so limited.
I adored the children in each of their various ways and was fascinated by their coming-of-ages. There are so many different strands with each of them in the novel and their fates are all bound up together. I was riveted by Dorothy’s determination to become a doctor, for example, and I completely admired her ambition and devotion to science. I cheered on her success. I longed for the happiness of Elsie and Philip, two children seriously disadvantaged by their upbringing. I was torn by Tom’s story, and didn’t understand why his mother didn’t understand. In short, each of the characters has their own plot arcs, and some are heartbreaking, while some are joyful.
Closing the book with the effects of World War I makes the entire rest of the book feel idyllic. I felt as though I was feeling what the British must have felt as they sent their sons off to die, each with their own life story as these character possess, and I found the entire last section absolutely heartbreaking. Here is a book that depicts the horrors of war, how each life is cut off abruptly with no preparation and no ending. It’s easy to see how this changed England and this book brought it home to me.
I’m not sure I loved The Children’s Book as much as I loved Possession, but the more I think about it, the more I think that might be possible. It has made this review hard to write because I can’t pin down exactly why. But I’ve tried, and if you have the patience for this, I believe it will reward you immensely.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book from the Amazon Vine program for review.
 Lady Callista Taillefaire has been jilted three times and no longer expects to get married. All she wants is to go along with her engaged sister and raise her animals in peace for the rest of her single life. That’s until her childhood sweetheart, Trevelyan, the duc de Monceaux, returns to tend his ailing mother after years in France. She hasn’t forgotten the feelings she had for him, or the way her now deceased father insisted that their relationship was expressly forbidden. To make Callie’s life even stranger, her first ex-fiance returns to plague her, and her cousin gambles away her prized heifer Hubert, leaving her wondering in which direction her life is going to head next.
I have enjoyed Laura Kinsale’s books in the past, and was expecting another dark, passionate tale. Instead, I got a light and funny book, with humor and flirtatiousness between the characters that genuinely sparkled whenever they interacted. It turns out that Kinsale is just as good at writing lighter romances and this book did not disappoint in any way. It was as sweet and touching as it was hilarious by turns.
I liked Callie’s character; she’s somewhat on the shelf at 27, and even believes that she’s unlikely to have a baby at all because she’s so old (I laughed at this), and since she’s been jilted three times, all the men around clearly believe there’s something wrong with her. I really felt for her, as it must be so hard to be rejected over and over again in a world where marriage and babies were seen as the primary goals of women. She’s awkward but she’s sweet and it’s clear that she really cares for Trev. Although, I have to say, if you haven’t seen someone for ten years, can they still qualify as your best friend? I don’t know, but I did like that they had a friendship. It’s also hard not to love someone who loves animals, even if her preference leans towards cows.
I also liked that Trev had a genuine grievance and reason for not proposing to Callie when he wants to. There tends to be a big misunderstanding that fizzles out to nothing, but here they really had a problem, and I appreciated how it was solved. There isn’t much else to the plot, the focus is solely on the romance, but Lessons in French is a wonderful addition to the genre. I sincerely hope Laura Kinsale doesn’t leave such a long wait for her next romance!
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 This gigantic book opens with the wedding of Savita Mehra and Pran Kapoor, uniting their families (and a whole lot of related families) for the rest of the book, though they have barely seen one another before. Part of the book revolves around Lata Mehra’s search for a suitable boy (hence the title), which her mother mainly controls, although Lata appears to be innately drawn towards the unsuitable boys. Another character, Maan, begins the novel as quite a superficial young man, not really interested in his business or his father’s role in government, mostly drawn to women, but he grows to become surprisingly lovable. And there are political forces at work throughout India, which is very newly independent and partitioned from Pakistan; struggles between Hindus and Muslims, between governmental parties, between the city and the countryside. Not only is the book immense, but so are the themes it covers.
This book probably took me the longest of any book I’m going to read this year, but I did it on purpose. It’s almost 1500 pages long (so it might be the actual longest book as well) and I attempted to spread it out over two weeks, although once I got towards the end I just read on to see what happened. I really, really enjoyed it. It’s properly satisfying and immersive as just such a chunkster should be. I did have my favorite parts, mostly to do with Lata and Maan (which is totally why they’re in my summary) and I also really liked the relationship between Pran and Savita, which goes from them barely knowing one another to a very sweet love. The book takes place over about a year’s time in India in the 50’s, so a ton of political action is happening. India is trying to define itself without the British, without part of its territory, and the process is messy.
I will admit that I found most of the political sections boring. I wasn’t really interested in the bills they were passing or all the arguments that went on. I felt like I could get what was happening from the parts that took place in the countryside, which I enjoyed more anyway, and which certainly had more of a human touch to them as we could see what various laws and decisions were taking effect. The actual politics don’t take up much of the book, but I definitely began skimming those parts toward the end to get back to the characters I cared about. I also was occasionally confused by how the characters classified themselves. I didn’t know the difference between people from various regions or castes and there was no way I could tell a Muslim from a Hindu by their names. I knew there was a caste system, but I guess I didn’t realize that it still existed so much fifty years ago, and I wonder how prevalent it is now. I was also really surprised at how much the color of skin was an issue. I was startled each time Mrs Rupa Mehra worried she was going to have a black grandchild and sought out a fair-skinned husband for Lata as a result.
It was wonderful to live in this book for a little while, and I already find that I miss many of the characters and I want to know what happened next. I was somewhat dissatisfied with one aspect of the ending, but that’s not enough to make me dislike the rest of the book. I’m very glad I read it and it had me thinking about India’s independence, a topic I was never really all that interested in before, maybe just because I never had reason to be. But at its core, this is still a novel about people and that’s why I really loved it. The characters are fully fleshed out and experience the full gamut of emotions; almost everything you could imagine happens in this book. I felt like I could have easily lived among them and become friends with them in real life, and Vikram Seth let me for the space of these pages. I’m very glad I have An Equal Music in my TBR piles at home, and I can imagine myself picking it up very soon.
A Suitable Boy is a huge, fantastic read with, to me, both a foreign and a very familiar focus. It was well worth the time I spent reading it and it’s a great start to my ongoing attempt to read outside of my comfort zone.
 What would happen if we twenty-first century people took a trip back in time to the fourteenth century? It would be very like visiting another country. Even our landscape would be greatly changed. Ian Mortimer takes this approach and, applying his theory of living history, treats his readers to an objective and entertaining view of one of the most stereotypical centuries in medieval history. The fourteenth century has not only castles, knights, tournaments, and wars, but also gave birth to many of the creative minds associated with medieval England like Chaucer and the Gawain-poet.
Living history is a fascinating idea. Instead of applying modern stereotypes to medieval practices, Mortimer attempts instead to understand them on their own terms. For example, a popular perception is that medieval people were dirty. In comparison to us, they were; most people did not bathe on a daily basis, nor did they have detergents and disinfectants to clean their houses or clothes with. From a medieval perspective, however, women spent hours working to clean their homes, clearing rushes from the floor, scouring pots and pans, and laundering clothes with a variety of harsh soaps. Men and women washed their hands and faces daily and even started to use perfumes. They ate politely, especially in the presence of their social betters. To them, that was cleanliness. There were, of course, smelly or messy people, but there are smelly and messy people now too.
Mortimer’s book is divided into eleven chapters, covering such topics as the landscape, the medieval character, health and hygiene, and the law. He uses examples to illustrate his points, such as a genuine medieval gang that evaded the law or examples of a few women who broke out of the status quo and became unusually wealthy and powerful. Queen Isabella is the second richest person in the century; quite remarkable when women were regarded as property of their husbands and fathers. He also attempts to convey the tragedy of the plague; while other historians may evaluate it for its effect on history, which was largely beneficial, Mortimer shows us how it was anything but that to the third to half of the population that died from it and their relatives, who watched them die and mourned for them. Mortimer even imagines a few conversations that travellers might have, for example, when bartering for food.
My favorite section, however, was the chapter on clothing. Using illuminated manuscripts and tapestries, Mortimer shows how the style of dress changed drastically from the beginning of the century to the end. Clothing more than anything enables me to visualize the people described in the book and, in my experience, is rarely mentioned in detail in schools or museums as few examples survive. I loved learning how the invention of the button changed clothing styles and how people moved gradually towards more provocative styles, which were of course disapproved of by clergy and the elderly.
This is certainly history worth reading. It’s not heavy at all and is a perfect read for the non-academic who wishes to learn a lot more about the Middle Ages but doesn’t have the patience for a more serious, longer study.
I loved this book so much that I’m going to be discussing it on That’s How I Blog with the wonderful Nicole on June 8th at 4 pm EST. Do you want a copy of your own to discuss with me? Thanks to Simon & Schuster, I have 3 copies to give away to anyone with a valid US mailing address. To enter, just leave a comment on this review. This contest will be open until February 8th. The winners are commenters 3, 6, and 32 thanks to random.org. Congratulations to Lindymc, The Kool-Aid Mom, and Alyce!
This review was originally posted at The Book Bag and I’d like to thank them for my review copy.
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