The Non-Fiction Bookshelf #1

When I was 18 my reading life changed dramatically. Until then, I had been an occasional reader that occasionally found comfort in reading musical biographies, fiction that was assigned in school, and thumbing through astronomy books that I found on my dad’s bookshelf. Maybe it was the life changes that one experiences at that age that prompted me to read more – maybe. The truth being that I don’t really know why at a foundational level my habits changed, only that they did, and as a result I read fervently more. The first books to really grab me were all non-fiction and tended to be science related. Gradually literary fiction became a kind of secular religion (that will be a separate list in the future), while the non-fiction ventured into philosophy, social documentation, art and aesthetic critiques, essays, and humor.

So in an effort to take up blog space in computer commuter extra dimensional cyber land, I’ve compiled a list in no order of non-fiction books that’ve had an impact on me in some deeply bruised way. I should also say, that this will be an ongoing list with multiple posts – so please check back for the exciting continuations until you just can’t take it anymore, or I’ve come to the end, or you or I die of old age. For each book that makes my list, I’ll mix up and juxtapose a bunch of words and letters that’ll encompass in some form of formless arbitrary randomness, brief descriptions of the subject matter in question, a quote or two from the text, and of course my opinions on everything and way too much more…

Lonely Planets – David Grinspoon


I first encountered Dr. David Grinspoon when I was reading a biography on Carl Sagan. David is the son of Dr. Lester Grinspoon; a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School that has done original work in cannabis research and mental health, and was a close friend of Sagan. The next encounter I had with David was at a lecture he gave at DU for the Denver Astronomical Society to promote this book and his research. Observing his natural exuberance and love for these topics make him a highly likable character. Why, y’all ask? Because he’s not the stereotypical science lecturer that radiates boredom, dryness, uninteresting logic, and social skills that bottom out in the negative extremis; but rather, Dr. Grinspoon gives highly charged and invigorating descriptions of all things astronomical – plus the dichotomy of his possession of degrees in philosophy and planetary science with a doctorate in the latter, and his physical appearance of multiple earrings and a frizzy, thinning afro atop a tall body, make for an interesting lecturing experience. Also, I must mention that he’s a local that’s based in Boulder and a fellow musician, and that I’ve seen a few of his talks at this point. Yes, he’s quirky, funny, and damn smart; and he wrote this amazing book that masterfully paints his individuality and passion for science across its 428 pages.

Some samples:

On Earth being in the habitable zone:

The surface of a planet can be a good place for elements and simple molecules to get together, try new variations on their structural themes, and make ever more complex molecules. Especially if, as was this particular planet, the third stone from a third-generation star, it is blessed with a sprinkling of holy water rich in carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus – the “biogenic elements.” It also helps if, when the music stops after the random accretionary dance, your planet winds up at a healthy distance from the irradiating glow of its newborn star.

On what “life” is:

Try this: Life is a self-perpetuating, self-contained chemical phenomenon that extracts or manufactures high-energy nutrients from its environment, excretes waste material of lower chemical energy, and surfs the energy difference between food and shit to go on living. Life is a breakfast cereal, a board game, a very long sentence, a bitch and then you die. I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: We don’t really know what life is. We may as well try and catch the wind as pin life down with a tidy definition… Now that I’ve established that we don’t know what life is, I’ll continue to describe where we think it came from.

On attending a conference in his adopted home turf of Boulder, CO:

It was a classic Boulder crowd: well-heeled hippies with carefully matted dreadlocks falling over designer tie-dyes, bespectacled academics toting tattered notebooks, and smatterings of spandex, bike helmets, laptops, dogs, beards and peasant dresses (not necessarily on the same person but not necessarily not), the occasional whiff of patchouli oil or pot (but absolutely no tobacco smoking, under pain of death)… Boulder is a bubble town nestled against the mountains thirty miles northwest of Denver. It’s sort of like the city in Logan’s Run, a pleasant place, and anybody who is unhappy or unattractive or too old or unwealthy is recycled, and used to grow organic, free-range fruits and vegetables.

Ha! Learning has never been so fun as Lonely Planets! It’s a bullet-train ride through history, pseudoscience, real science, philosophy, astrobiology, and his specialty, planetary science. I must say that this is probably my favorite astronomy book, because I’ve plowed though it twice now and I’m sure I’ll do it a few more times as the years go on.


40 Ways To Look At Winston Churchill – Gretchen Rubin


Gretchen Rubin is a former lawyer that has been a clerk for Sandra Day O’Connor, provided legal counsel to an FCC chairman, and has been a professor at Yale Law School. In all her free time she wrote a book and started a family. Eventually she chucked the lawyer thing and decided to devote herself fulltime to writing, thus producing her second book; 40 Ways To Look At Winston Churchill.

This book is unique because it’s a short 300 page romp through an amazing life, where 40 questions are asked in the form of chapters about its namesake. Rubin knew she had to do something different in order to garner any kind of attention on one of the most recognizable figures in recent history. Among the piles of biographies on Churchill, this one stands out because it doesn’t tell the reader a linear set of facts that add up to a “business as usual” biography, but rather gives conflicting views of the man from diverse sources. It is up to the reader to decide, not the biographer, on the questions posed. The form of this book attracted me as much as the story of Churchill, because it represents in a non-fiction guise, what fiction authors have been arguing is the most unique quality to the art of fiction and reading; the reader is the co-author, the co-creator of the imaginative experience. Fiction authors will say that this is proof that reading is non-passive, but rather highly engaging for a reader that is experiencing story telling through their own mind’s eye, thus filtering the author’s story through their personal perspectives and interpretations to create a unique activity. By asking questions in the chapter headings, Rubin has given the reader a map to follow that points to the often conflicting notions of a character that resists definitive conclusions.

On the tactics of biographers:

Churchill biographers – like all biographers – decide their stories and include facts to support them. Someone portraying Churchill as the savior of his country chooses certain facts; someone debunking the Churchill myth chooses others. In deciding what facts to relate – where each detail must stand in for hundreds of omitted details – biographers act like novelists, using theme, irony, motif, metonymy, description, symbolism, morals, and the like to shape a particular image of their subject.

Winston Churchill’s own words:

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

“Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right than responsible and wrong.”

“All newborn babies look like me.”

An American critic talking to Churchill about Mahatma Gandhi and the subject of Indian independence and Churchill’s reluctance to give up British India:

“Before we proceed any further, let us get one thing clear. Are we talking about the brown Indians in India, who have multiplied alarmingly well under benevolent British rule? Or are we speaking of the red Indians in America who, I understand, are almost extinct?”

On Churchill the renaissance man:

There is something melodramatic – legendary – fantastic about Churchill, a figure galloping out of the past. Even his name has Dickensian aptness: sacred and lofty, with decisive, alliterative elements. Can the facts be true? Could he really have been a man who was not only a prominent world statesman but also rode to hounds, fenced, flew airplanes, played polo, owned racehorses, painted, farmed, and collected tropical fish? Who without a university education was a celebrated war correspondent, novelist, historian, and biographer – whose books were not only best sellers but also won their author the Nobel Prize in literature, in the same year it might be added, he accepted the Order of Garter? He was the only person to serve in the War Cabinet in both WWI and WWII; he served in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. At age 70, in shooting contest with General Eisenhower and guard officers, Churchill hit 9 shots in the center of a bull’s-eye and 1 on the fringe.

Question and answer or not; you decide. That is the task of this book, because part of Churchill's mystique lies within our outlook. In this way, his likeness is seen through ourselves.