Expectations

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Our minds are our most powerful tools.  Some of us wonder what reality is, and David Robson has written a very important book that the title explains: The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World.  Now, before your woo-woo meter goes off, Robson is a science writer and everything in his book is backed by evidence.  The basic idea is this: what we expect to happen often becomes our reality due to the “expectation effect.”  The brain, as Robson describes it, is a prediction machine.  And what it expects often takes place.  In other words, belief matters.  Probably the most famous example of this is the placebo.  We all know that patients treated with placebos often recover just as well as patients given the active ingredient.  That pill the doctor gives will heal them, and so it does.  The brain expects it, and it happens.  Belief.

This book also explores the nocebo response.  This is where you expect something bad, and it happens.  The most extreme examples of this, well documented, are when people are convinced an imaginary threat will kill them and they die of it.  In fact, the book opens with consideration of such an occurrence where a cultural expectation led to otherwise unexplainable deaths among healthy Hmong populations fearing a night demon.  Hysteria grew and so did the deaths.  Robson also explores how hysteria leads to expectations that our brains carry out.  He shows how training our expectations can help good self-fulfilling prophecies take place.  Athletes, for example, can seem to do the impossible.  Why?  Partially training, yes.  But also because of their mindsets.  Their expectations.  Their beliefs.

The implications of this are very broad.  Everything from our health, to how we handle stress, to how food benefits our bodies, to how we age as we expect to.  Robson is quick to point out that this isn’t a book to solve all our problems, but it is a book that demonstrates our minds do make things real.  Or at least they can.  It is filled with fascinating examples, backed with science, showing that even how a doctor or nurse introduces a shot “you’ll feel a bit of a sting” versus “you won’t feel a thing” can make a difference to how our body perceives it.  And our brains can make our worries, or our hopeful expectations, real.  Personally, I believe that there may be even more to this than Robson explores.  But then again, I enjoy a bit of mystery.  I believe in belief.  Regardless, this is a life-changing book and I hope, for your own sake, that you’ll read it.

Shadow Half

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Sometimes you just take a chance on a book you haven’t heard of.  You see, I keep a very active “to read” list.  The problem is that many books on it are a bit on the heavy side and it takes me a long time to get through lengthy books.  Every once in a while I go to a bookstore to browse for a book that’s short and speculative.  It seems that when I was growing up it wasn’t difficult to find fiction under 300 pages.  In any case, that’s how I found Sunny Moraine’s Your Shadow Half Remains.  It was in the “horror” section of a local bookstore.  (Even “horror” sections are now difficult to locate.)  It looked like it wouldn’t take me a month to read.  It was a good call.  It’s what I like in a scary story.

Not too gory and written with literary finesse, Your Shadow Half Remains is a pandemic story.  Well, not literally, but sort of literally.  It was published just this year and the story revolves around a pandemic in which people are infected by looking into each other’s eyes.  Nobody knows for sure how this happens, but people who are infected begin to act violently toward those around them before killing themselves.  Naturally, therefore, survivors begin to isolate themselves.  So Riley moves to a lake cabin where her grandparents got infected and died, but since there’s nobody else around the contagion can’t spread.  She lays in supplies and awaits, well, that’s just it—awaits what?  Her plan is interrupted, however, when she learns that she has a neighbor.  Maybe two.

One neighbor she starts to get to know, but they can’t look directly at one another and can’t really know each other’s motives.  Herein hangs the tale.  People are social creatures and the pandemic (in real life) caused much of its damage in the form of isolating ourselves from one another.  Other people, instead of being companions, were threats.  Especially in the early days when it wasn’t clear how the virus was spreading.  The safest thing was to stay home and avoid others.  It’s that aspect that Moraine really captures here.  A woman set to try to wait this thing out alone, but then, another person complicates things.  And how can you tell insanity from infection apart from insanity brought on by isolation?  Both seem to lead to the same results.  I took a chance on this unknown story, and it was a chance well taken.

Showing Gratitude

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Stealing is something that we all, except some capitalists, know is wrong.  I think quite a lot about the land that was stolen to make America possible and I know that simply giving it back isn’t an option.  Nevertheless, I do believe that we should listen, and listen attentively to those who’ve been here longer than Europeans.  Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass is an important reflection of this dilemma.  Kimmerer is Potawatomi and she’s also a professor of Environmental Biology.  The book is a series of essays that focus mostly on plants and what we can learn from them.  It also brings in indigenous teaching, contrasting the outlook of gratitude against that of greed.  By turns sad, funny, and profound, Braiding Sweetgrass contains a message that is vital to counter climate change.  To correct our attitude before it’s too late.

There’s so much in this book that it’s difficult to know what to touch on in this brief notice.  Throughout, Kimmerer notes that the First Nations viewed life as a gift.  The earth is constantly giving and the native way was to be thankful and to accept the responsibility of being given a gift.  Seeing how the European attitude was “take until there’s no more to take,” she points out that taking what you need and leaving for others is a way out of our current dilemma.  She does this, most strikingly, by the story of the windigo.  The windigo has become popular among monster fans as a consuming beast, but Kimmerer shows how the story has a profound point.  If all you do is consume you become a monster.  You stop a windigo by showing gratitude.

Perhaps the most striking thing, to me, was how Kimmerer describes her own experience becoming a scientist.  How standard academics refused to believe they had anything to learn from Native American outlooks, especially when borne by a woman.  How she was told she couldn’t be a scientist, not with that outlook.  And how she learned the European way but didn’t give up her native understanding.  How she brings two worlds together and does so with a sense of urgency and hope.  Things have gone too far simply to turn back the calendar and say that our ancestors had it all wrong, but it’s not too late to learn from those who lived for millennia on this land and were untainted by ideas of private ownership.  Those who knew how to live sustainably with nature.  Those who knew, and still know, how to defeat monsters.

Fear of Spiders

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To anticipate, “mygale” is French for “tarantula.”  I learned about Mygale, also published under its English translation, or else Serpent’s Tail, from a Goodreads review.  It’s increasingly difficult to find good, short books.  I knew little about it other than it is a “thriller” by Thierry Jonquet.  The book contains one of the most cleverly drawn plots I’ve encountered in some time.  I also believe it could slip into the horror genre.  I’m reluctant to say much because the pieces are revealed so intricately that to summarize would be to ruin the effect.  I will say that if you’ve seen The Skin I Live in you know the basic idea already.

I will opine that this story demonstrates that a book need not be excessively long to be a good novel.  Some of us appreciate the economy of language that illustrates Pascal’s famous quote, “I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”  My first relatively descent novel was about 230,000 words, or, in other words, well over 400 pages.  The publishers I half-heartedly queried said it was too long.  When writing short stories I quickly learned that many journals only take them if they’re under 3,000 words, some only under 2,000.  As a result, I began writing short.  That’s not exactly true.  I write the story as I want to tell it, then I cut it down.  Again and again.  Short seems to be the fashion in the internet age.  Ironically, the books on my too read shelf all seem to be quite long.  That’s why I decided to give Mygale a try.

I’m glad I did.  The story may not be for the most squeamish, but it’s certainly not blood and gore.  It’s a little confusing at first, but it comes to make sense.  And the ending is somewhat satisfying.  It’s not happy by any means, but it’s well told.  Some classify it as science fiction, but there’s nothing too impossible about it.  It’s set in France around the 1980s.  No space ships or ray guns to be seen.  Genres can be tricky in the face of creativity, but the final act, if you will, reveals this to have been horror all along.  Well, I hope I’ve been able to give a sense of this book without giving any spoilers.  Talking around a subject comes with years of classroom experience, I guess.  I will say the spider isn’t literal.

Clergy Problems

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I believe Revival is the most recently written Stephen King novel I’ve read.  It was pretty good—it certainly scores high on the religion and horror scale, although it takes quite a while to get to the horror part.  Part of the problem for me is that I liked Charles Daniel Jacobs.  I tended to relate more to him than to Jamie Morton (the narrator/protagonist).  Perhaps this was because, like Jacobs, I studied to be a Methodist minister.  And like him, came to have a rather different view of what is really going on in the world.  He’s clearly King’s villain, however.  Or “fifth business” as he’s termed in the novel.  The secret lightning he seeks turns out to be a kind of MacGuffin.  I was curious to know more about it.  The novel, as is typical, has several subplots but the main one is how Jamie and Charlie face what’s after death in a tragic climax.

Charlie starts out as a Methodist preacher.  When his wife and son are tragically killed, he becomes a huckster who actually has tapped into an electrical power that can heal people.  It often, however, leaves bad aftereffects.  Jamie, who knew him as a kid, is cured by him from a heroin addiction.  Their paths continue to cross over the next fifty years or so—this is a longitudinal story—as Jamie comes more and more to distrust his childhood hero.  Charlie can use electricity to perform wonders and it make him rich.  He wants more, however.  He wants to see beyond death to assure himself that his wife and son are in a better place.  It seems to me that that motivation isn’t a bad one.  The only way he seems a villain is that he doesn’t really care for other people.

The story is well told but it doesn’t have the same “classic” feel as some of King’s earlier novels.  He well understands, however, that horror and religion belong together.  I haven’t read all of his novels—not by a long shot—but clergy aren’t rare and when they’re present they’re implicated in the horrors, or in this case, responsible for them.  These are important insights, as others have also noticed.  Revival is one of those books that requires some reflection.  It certainly feels like something written by a man facing the limitations of the aging process.  And not necessarily at peace with it.  Ministers sometimes do go bad—they’re only human—but they can also lead to real change.  I, for one, am interested to hear what King has to say about it.

Reading 2023

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As has become my tradition, I’ll end the year reflecting on the books I’ve read.  For a variety of reasons this is the first time in nine years that I haven’t cleared seventy books.  (I ended up one shy.)  But looking back over what I read, I may see some logic behind this.  Many of the books were academic, and specifically, academic in fields outside my formal training.  That also means they generally didn’t make it to my list of favorites.  2023 was also unusual in that it wasn’t until about late spring that I started to read books I really enjoyed.  The first on my list of memorable titles is Andi Marquette’s The Secret of Sleepy Hollow.  This was followed by a couple other fiction titles, Grady Hendrix’s Final Girl Support Group and Gina Chung’s Sea Change.  Those ended up being my favorite three fiction titles of the year.

For nonfiction, I finally read John Hersey’s Hiroshima, memorable, if terrifying.  Also along the lines of history, I found Lesley Pratt Bannatyne’s two books Halloween and Halloween Nation, to be particularly good.  Mark Dawidziak’s Mystery of Mysteries may well have been my favorite historically-oriented book of the year.  Donna Kornhaber’s Silent Film: A Very Short Introduction was also quite well done.  I always enjoy books on horror films, and two on The Exorcist were noteworthy: Nat Segaloff’s The Exorcist Legacy and The Exorcist Effect by Joseph P. Laycock and Eric Harrelson.  Why It’s OK to Love Bad Movies by Matthew Strohl, which I read a bit earlier in the year was also quite good.  By far the most helpful book in a personally troubling year was The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy.

In years past I’ve generally had more commendable books on my list.  I did, however, finish the last three Dark Shadow’s novels by Marylin Ross, reaching the bucket-list item of having read the entire series.  I also found Jessica Verday’s three-volume series strangely memorable, although written for young adults (found here, here, and here).  While the number of books I really enjoyed wasn’t as high as in some other years, these highlights make me optimistic regarding 2024.  I used to follow the Modern Mrs. Darcy’s reading challenge guidelines, until they stopped being published, and now I find myself left to my own devices, for the most part.  Much of my reading is driven by research, and I suppose I should also mention that my own fifth book was published in 2023 as well.  I don’t expect it’ll be anybody’s favorite, but it is nevertheless an honor to be part of the conversation.

Review Copy

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You reach an age, or maybe a stage, where it’s difficult to recall details.  Too many emails about too many things and you just have trouble recalling where you read this or that.  Someone a few months ago, perhaps on this blog, lamented not being able to afford Holy Horror.  I wanted to let that person (or any other interested party) know it is now available free—for review—on Reading Religion.  Feel free to drop me a comment if you don’t know how to get this thing started.  When I was a grad student I learned about reviewing.  It was the way to get ahold of expensive books for free.  I’m no longer able to do them (conflict of interest), but I still think they’re one of the greatest perks for the literate.

Reading Religion does not require a Ph.D. to permit an interested party to volunteer.  Since it’s a religion site, many clergy do reviews.  If you’ve been talking to anyone about Holy Horror (and I’m just sure you have!) and they want to read it, let them know.  There’s nothing more embarrassing to have nobody wanting to read your book when it’s available for free.  Besides, reviews are how people find out about books.  Over half-a-million new websites are created each and every day, my friends.  We’ve got to help each other out!  I’ve been providing free content here daily for twelve years now—I need someone to review my book.  I know people are busy.  There are an estimated 1.7 billion websites, many with multiple pages.  Who has time?

I try to post about lots of books here on Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.  I know it’s not a frequently visited website (I’m a realist) but I know at least two publishers have taken blurbs from my words here to promote their books.  Those of us who read have to stick together.  Writing, to me, is how you pay back for all the reading you get to do in life.  It helps, of course, if people know about your books.  By the way, if you have an interest in religion at all you should check out Reading Religion.  It’s a great site to figure out what’s going on in books.  And you might even find something there you’d like to read.  I’d do reviews myself, but that’s no longer permitted.  I’ll put my thoughts here on this blog, though.  It’s only doing to others what I would appreciate being done back.

The Deal

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Intellectual property is a concept that only arises where thought can be monetized. Think about that. (But don’t charge me, please!) It is a strange idea, when you ponder it. In any case, one of the problems with writing book reviews is that the reviews themselves become the intellectual property of the journal in which they appear. In a mental ménage à trois, everyone gets something out of it: the publisher gives away a book for free publicity, the journal gets copyright content of value to its readers, and the reviewer gets a free book. In the best of these encounters everyone goes home happy. I began doing book reviews when teaching at Nashotah House. Academic books are expensive and although professors make more than editors do, they are still hard-pressed to pay academic press prices. After my strictly platonic affair with higher education, I stopped doing reviews for a while, but now that I have hours on a bus to read, I’ve picked up the habit again.

Most often I review books for the two societies of which I’m a member—the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. There might, however, be a conflict of interest here. One of the main things I do on this blog is talk about books. Since I’m no longer a professor, but I still think like one, I figure it’s a compromise I can live with. The conflict arises because I post daily on my blog while publishers take weeks, or even months, to publish reviews. Despite technology, publishing is a slow business. That means that I read books I can’t really talk about until the review has appeared. That’s the case with Jill Graper Hernandez’s Early Modern Women and the Problem of Evil: Atrocity & Theodicy. I can’t say here what I say in my review since the review isn’t my intellectual property anymore. There’s another trade-off here: publishers get your name out there in return for owning your content—everything can come down to the level of business, it seems.

Still, I can use this post to reflect on theodicy—the justification of God in the face of evil. Since I don’t address this fact in my review I can say here that since Trump’s election it’s difficult to read a book about suffering without tying it to the current political situation. Many of the incumbent’s ardent supporters are coming to see that he doesn’t really care for them or their issues, and conservatives as well as liberals have four years of suffering to face. I was surprised how often in reading this philosophical treatise that our present national shame came to mind. Perhaps that’s inevitable in a book that discusses how women have been repressed in a world where they too have been relegated to the level of a commodity. Intellectual property seems less a concern when human beings are still trafficked as chattel. That’s not just bad business, it’s evil.