What I'm reading ...

I have started Reality is not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli. Time for non-fiction and what better for light reading than an explanation of quantum gravity. 🙂 Here's the blurb:

Do space and time truly exist? What is reality made of? Can we understand its deep texture? Scientist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. In this mind-expanding book, he shows how our understanding of reality has changed throughout centuries, from Democritus to loop quantum gravity. Taking us on a wondrous journey, he invites us to imagine a whole new world where black holes are waiting to explode, spacetime is made up of grains, and infinity does not exist -- a vast universe still largely undiscovered.

Hold Back the Night - by Jessica Moor.

Overall, I thought that this was an excellent book. It fulfilled my main requirements in a fiction book: an engaging story, believable characters and an opportunity to learn something (although there was a slight wrinkle with the last of these - comments below).

The story is set in three time periods: 1959/60, early 80s and 2020. The story was characterised by the events around each of these time periods, respectively: the treatment (torture?) of patients in a mental hospital to “cure” them of their homosexuality, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and the COVID lockdown. There are story threads that run between the timeframes and the author subtly compares the times and events.

A really clever device is used to show that the story is essentially constructed as a recollection from the 2020 version of the main protagonist: the first two periods are written in the third person, but the last in the first person.

In terms of my education, I did learn from this book. Specifically, I now understand much more clearly the inhumane (by today’s standards) practice of endeavouring to “cure” homosexuals. However, I am always a little wary of how assiduous an author's research has been when I spot a glaring error. In this case, it is no big deal, but there is a reference to blood being stored in bags in 1959. At that time, glass bottles were used; bags did not come into use until the '70s. Just me being pedantic perhaps …

What I'm reading ...

I have started Hold Back the Night by Jessica Moor. This is another book which I have, but have no recollection of how that came about. But it looks interesting. Here’s the blurb:

March 2020. Annie is alone in her house as the world shuts down, only the ghosts of her memories for company. But then she receives a phone call which plunges her deeper into the past.

Year 1959: Annie and Rita are student nurses at Fairlie Hall mental hospital. Working long, gruelling hours, they soon learn that the only way to appease their terrifying matron is to follow the rules unthinkingly. But what is happening in the hospital's hidden side wards? And at what point does following the rules turn into complicity - and betrayal?

Year 1983: Annie is reeling from the loss of her husband and struggling to face raising her daughter alone. Following a chance encounter, she offers a sick young man a bed for the night, a good deed that soon leads to another. Before long, she finds herself entering a new life of service - her home a haven for those who are cruelly shunned. But can we ever really atone?

A Different Kind of Power - by Jacinda Ardern

I started reading this book with a biased viewpoint: I had regarded Jacinda Ardern as one of the most influential politicians [or world leaders] of my lifetime. This is simply because she is unusual [IMHO], but thankfully not unique, in being in politics for all the right reasons. She was not interested in power for power’s sake and not looking to financially benefit - her simple goal was [is] to make the world just a bit better for as many people as possible.

I really enjoyed reading her story of how she developed her interest in politics and how that became focussed, culminating [so far] in her becoming Prime Minister of New Zealand. Unlike many political memoirs, she does not spend lots of time telling the reader how great she is or celebrating her achievements. To me, she comes over as a real person, suffering the Imposter Syndrome that most of us seem to exhibit.

In summary, the book delivered on the promises of its blurb. We see [or at least I do] that Jacinda Ardern is very intelligent and driven, with a large dose of empathy and compassion. The world needs more people like that. I very much hope that we haven’t heard the last of this extraordinary woman.