Tag: entertainment

Reading Roundup 2023

The most impactful book to me in 2023 was one I wrote with my wife Carol and our youngest son. Stepping Stones: our pathfinding adventures with Asperger’s is our growth journey from accepting “that’s just Philip,” to obtaining a diagnosis on the autism spectrum, to learning how to cope and still succeed. From the distinct advantage of countless wayfinding steps more than 20 years in the making, we offer pragmatic guidance, self-help encouragement, and real reason for hope to all parents and caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder. tinyurl.com/4c6bxw4s

I try to read widely, for both intellectual development and entertainment. Not all my choices pertain directly to my work, or even my personal interests. Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, recommended to me by my physicist son, wasn’t one I’d have chosen on my own, but it did augment what I learned from the Oppenheimer film this year. Even fiction, when it represents a divergent point of view, can add to my useful stores of knowledge. Ilana’s Love, a book by my friend (which, despite the inference from its title is not a romance novel—a genre I usually do ignore!), furnished a thought-provoking perspective on relationships.

I re-read all 4,100 pages of the 7-volume Harry Potter series, (the first published 26 years ago!) enjoying many details and nuances not found in the films. J.K. Rowling is a master of originality, dialog, character development, and plot complexities.

Is it just me, or are subtitles are getting longer all the time? But then there’s John Grisham, whose obviously successful title formula is: “The __.” Nonetheless, the subtitles do help me better remember the content afterward.

The complete list of those I’ve read last year follows, but here are my personal citations for those I’ve found most captivating, memorable, or practical in the following categories:

Work-related: Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need
Biography: Leonardo da Vinci
History: The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush
Science: An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Nonfiction: Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
Business: Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry’s
Spiritual: Experiencing God Day by Day
Fiction: What Rose Forgot, and The Man Who Died Twice

  1. Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?, Philip Yancy
  2. Storytizing: What’s Next After Advertising? Bob Pearson
  3. The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush, Pierre Berton
  4. The Freedom of Self-Forgiveness: The Path to True Christian Joy, Timothy Keller
  5. A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks, Brad Edmundson
  6. Black Ice, Brad Thor
  7. The Case For Easter: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection, Lee Strobel
  8. The Cabinet of Dr. Leng, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  9. Seeing Red, Sandra Brown
  10. Jerks at Work: How to Deal with People Problems and Problem People, Ken Lloyd
  11. Born a Yankee, Grace Carstens
  12. Missing Witness, Gordon Campbell
  13. Ilana’s Love, Laurel West
  14. Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  15. Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, Piers Paul Read
  16. Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado with Vince Rause
  17. The Book of Lies, Brad Meltzner
  18. The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World, Ken Alder
  19. Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel
  20. Reliquary, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  21. What Rose Forgot, Nevada Barr
  22. Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry’s, Brad Edmundson
  23. The Book of Fate, Brad Meltzner
  24. Once Upon a Wardrobe, Patti Callahan
  25. Becoming Mrs. Lewis, Patti Callahan
  26. What’s Wrong With Me? A Journal of Emotional Healing in a Broken World, Royce Alan Alford
  27. Leonardo da Vinci, Wallter Isaacson
  28. Stepping Stones: Our pathfinding adventure with Asperger’s, Tim and Carol Herd with Philip Herd
  29. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong
  30. The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod, Henry Beston
  31. 13½, Nevada Barr
  32. Love Me, Garrison Keillor
  33. Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, Alex Wellerstein
  34. Address Unknown, Katherine Kressman Taylor
  35. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan
  36. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer
  37. The Judge’s List, John Grisham
  38. The Troop, Nick Cutter
  39. The Whistler, John Grisham
  40. The Reckoning, John Grisham
  41. What Was Rescued, Jane Bailey
  42. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
  43. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
  44. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
  45. Molly’s Pilgrim, Barba Cohen
  46. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
  47. The Bullet That Missed, Richard Osman
  48. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
  49. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
  50. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
  51. Getting Through the Tough Stuff: It’s Always Something, Charles Swindoll
  52. Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need, Todd Henry
  53. The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Osman
  54. Experiencing God Day by Day, Henry Blackaby and Richard Blackaby

da Vinci, Genius

insatiably curious, relentlessly observant

I recently learned quite a bit about the self-taught polymath and world-renown genius Leonardo da Vinci, in an excellent biography by Walter Isaacson.

In it I discovered that Leonardo was the illegitimate firstborn son of Piero, in a long line of Florentine notaries. He lived with his birth mother and was apprenticed to the artist Verrocchio in Florence. He was a dandy dresser, favoring rose-colored robes. He was a disdaining contemporary of Michaelangelo (“He paints like a sculptor”), a friend of Nicolo Macchiavelli, and spent the better part of his life seeking patronage from provincial rulers to do the things he wanted to do. He earned a reputation for not finishing works, preferring instead to follow his interests, rather than his commissions.

As an artist, da Vinci is famous for his ability to convey lifelike motion with emotion in his subjects, and as the painter of The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa masterpieces. But his insatiable curiosity and keen observations led to many innovative concepts in art, entertainment, nature, science, geometry, architecture, urban design, engineering, hydraulics, and anatomy, to name just several.

How many other artists do you know who dissect cadavers to learn first-hand what muscles control movements in their subjects? He studied the actual mechanisms that transmit emotions into facial expressions. On one sheet of the ever-present notebooks he clipped to his robes is an anatomical sketch of a pair of lips that seem to suggest a just a hint of a mysterious smile, which resurfaced in his most famous portrait.

But what fascinates me about his anatomical studies is his intuitive leap to connect what he observed in natural stream flow with the internal biological workings of the human heart. Informed by his love of hydraulic engineering, fluid dynamics, and his fascination with swirls and eddies, he made a discovery about the aortic valve that was not fully appreciated for centuries. In 1510, he correctly concluded in that eddies in the blood in the widened section of the aorta were responsible for closing the valve it just passed through.

The common view, which was held by most heart specialists for another 450 years, was that the valve was pushed shut from above once enough blood had rushed into the aorta and began to back up. Most other valves work that way, closing when the flow begins to reverse. But in the 1960s, a team of medical researchers at Oxford used dyes and radiography methods to observe blood flows. The experiments showed that the valve required “a fluid dynamic control mechanism which positions the cusps away from the wall of the aorta, so the slightest reversed flow will close the valve.” That mechanism, they realized, was the vortex of swirling blood that Leonardo had discovered in the aorta root.

In 1991, the Carolina Heart Institute showed how closely the Oxford experiments resembled the ones Leonardo had described in his notebooks. And in 2014, another Oxford team was able to study blood flow in a living human, using magnetic resonance techniques, to prove conclusively that Leonardo was right.

Despite his ground-breaking discoveries and insightful futuristic fancies, Leonardo seemed motivated to accumulate knowledge for its own sake, rather than to be recognized as a scholar or to influence history. He largely left his trove of treatises unpublished. Over the years, and even centuries, his discoveries had to be rediscovered by others. Isaacson concludes, “The fact that he didn’t publish served to diminish his impact on the history of science. But it didn’t diminish his genius.”

I highly recommend the book: you’ll be amazed at the scope of da Vinci’s work, and perhaps, like me, inspired to be more curious and observant.

Saying pieces

Agonizing childhood Christmas tradition develops character

When I was a little kid, it was a time-honored tradition in my church that all the children of the Sunday School classes would “Say Pieces” at Christmastime and Easter.

Such were the agonizing times of Kid-dom. Whether it was memorizing and reciting a scripture verse or short poem, or playing an instrument, singing a song, or even performing a bit of drama, it was a stressful time on Center Stage.

Not that it was a big one. But that didn’t matter. It was all the mandatory preparation and the grown-ups’ stern warnings about getting it right in front of everybody. It was a big deal.

… Not that I can remember any piece of any of the Pieces I ever recited…

But many of them were quite similar to the now well-known declaration of Buddy the Elf: “The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!” You know, when you’re a little impressionable kid, that’s really a huge pile of words to get just right.

I do, however, remember how we got to dress in plaid bathrobes to play Shepherds Abiding in the Fields. And how, one Eastertime, my cousin wore his green plastic army helmet to play a Roman soldier.

The annual production spared no one. Even the really little kids, the ones who were too little to even know what was going on, were sent out there. This cherished image is of my little sister Ann and her friend Jimmy, who paraded holding hands all the way from the staging area behind the upright piano to the platform, faced the audience with the signs hung around their little cherubic necks, then returned to wild acclaim.

Our individual and collective behaviors solicited both pride and embarrassment in our parents. For our grandparents and all the other old people, the spectacle was highly entertaining.

Afterwards, back in the classroom, we’d be rewarded with a small box of mixed chocolates and an orange from our Teacher: Presents! Next up: the real deal with Santa at home—yeah!

Despite all the trauma however, the ordeal developed character—not that we cared. But it did force us into such real out-of-the-comfort-zone growth experiences as public speaking, addressing an audience of peers and authority figures, overcoming fears and nervousness, exercising brain power, learning new information and how “practice makes perfect.”

I also remember how one little girl learned the power of a bribe. (Or shall I say “incentivized reward.”) All through the rehearsals, she refused to go on stage. But then her mother discovered just the right enticement in the promise of a special lollipop. (Did she bring some for all of us?) When it came to it, the girl delivered forthrightly, then ran directly to claim her reward from Mom hiding behind the piano.

After all these years, I’ve come to value sharing My Piece. It’s proclaimed a little differently now, and disseminated on a blog in a way no one could have imagined so long ago. Yet the sharing of our thoughts, concepts, ideas and ideals in a public forum remains a noble and cherished cause of personal expression and communal liberty.

So I now choose to share with you one of my favorite Pieces this Christmastime. It was written by the Nobel Prize winner of Literature in 1928, Sigrid Undset:

And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans—and all that lives and moves upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused—and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.

And as Ann and Jimmy so endearingly express: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!