Book Review ~~ A Clash of Kings ~~

A short while ago, I read the story “A Clash of Kings”, by George R. R. Martin. Like “A Game of Thrones”, a book I reviewed a while ago, it’s part of the series A Song of Ice and Fire and is extremely long–minus the appendix, the US paperback version is 969 pages long. Every page is worth it, though, and while the multiple POVs are often frustrating, leaving you at a cliffhanger just when the POV switches, they skillfully present a view of many different sides. Chapters featuring Tyrion are delightfully funny, featuring intriguing insights into the Lannisters’ inner politics. Meanwhile, the happenings on the Wall provide an extremely interesting story, which is currently quite disconnected from the main story of the Game of Thrones but will most likely be tied in with it at some future point in the series. Similarly, Daenerys’ adventures are filled with wonderful snippets about her dragons and what people do for them, but aren’t yet connected with the “main” part of the story, since she hasn’t yet crossed the ocean to reach Westeros. In Westeros, a multitude of people have declared themselves to be rulers; Joffrey Baratheon, who is backed by the Lannisters, claims that he had legally inherited the Iron Throne, but it is believed that he isn’t Robert’s child, and rumors that he is Jaime’s instead stain his reputation, while Stannis Baratheon, who is the rightful ruler, wages war against his younger brother, Renly Baratheon, in a battle for the throne, as Renly, the more charismatic of the brothers, believes that he deserves the throne instead. Robb Stark has declared himself King of the North, and his mother, Catelyn Stark, acts as an ambassador to Renly Baratheon in a suggestion that they work together to defeat the Lannisters, but is rebuffed, though in a friendly manner. Balon Greyjoy, yet another self-proclaimed king, declares himself to be the King of the Iron Islands and the North, launching many attacks against the border of the North. This frenzy of rulers provides a skilfully written, literal “clash of kings” which I would rate 9.7/10 and recommend to anyone who enjoys fantasy, adventure, or just fiction in general and has enough time to read this huge series.

Book Review ~~ The Testing ~~

Quite recently, I read “The Testing”, by Joelle Charbonneau. While it may not be good enough to gain a permanent spot on your bookshelf (unless, like me, you have multiple bookshelves and boxes filled with books), it’s certainly worth a read, especially if you liked other dystopian novels like this one. It doesn’t add much new material to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy or Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, but it’s a great book all the same, even if it’s relatively unoriginal. It’s set after the Seven Stages of war–the first Four Stages were about humans’ war against each other, and in the last three, the earth “fought back”, mutating so that many new kinds of plants and animals were created, many of them very different from the life before the mutation. Then, the remaining humans banded together to create the United Commonwealth in an attempt to rebuild the world. Malencia “Cia” Vale, the protagonist of the story, is a sixteen-year-old girl from Five Lakes Colony, one of the smallest colonies so far with only nine hundred people. She, along with three others from the graduating class of fourteen people–Tomas, who was a close friend of hers until they drifted apart, Zandri, and Malachi– is chosen for the Testing, a test that will allow the best and brightest to progress to the University and continue their schooling to become the nation’s future leaders. This should be a time for her to rejoice, as she feels that it will make her father, who passed the Testing, proud, but instead, her father warns her to trust no one, because the test isn’t just what it seems. While his memory of the testing was wiped, he explains, he often has nightmares about what happened during the Testing, and he believes that the Test isn’t just a paper-and-pen test, because in his nightmares, he sees the world blowing up and people who seem to be his friends, who entered the Testing with him, being killed. Cia tries to follow his advice, but as the book progresses, it seems like her childhood friend, Tomas, may be among the ones she shouldn’t trust, and she has to choose whether she can trust him or not. I really liked the book, especially because the book is really focused on actual, academic knowledge, something that wasn’t in the Hunger Games or Divergent trilogies. I would recommend it to anyone who likes dystopian stories and rate it 9.8/10.

Book Review ~~ Anthem ~~

A while ago, I had the pleasure of reading “Anthem,” by Ayn Rand, a very interesting book about a man who dared to think of himself as a single person, instead of as a mindless member of humans, thinking of himself as “I” instead of thinking of humankind as “we” and even naming himself. As he searched for knowledge, he discovered electricity and lightbulbs, unthinkable in a world where no one thinks for himself, only following the decisions of the World Council. In this world where everyone is a mindless unit of a whole, the words inscribed in the Palace of the World Council are: “We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, One, indivisible and forever.” Ayn Rand does a much better job of explaining the atmosphere of the book than I do, of course, but hopefully I’ve explained the book well enough for you to get the gist of it. Though this book is barely eighty pages long, each page is very meaningful, telling a lot about humanity as a whole. I really enjoyed reading this book and recommend it to anyone who likes meaningful books about individualism or just reading in general, as this short, succinct book is enough of a quick read to allow people interested in it to decide whether they want to continue reading after just a short while. I would rate it 9.8/10.

Book Review ~~ A Game of Thrones ~~

Today I just finished reading “A Game of Thrones”, by George R. R. Martin. It’s the first book in the series A Song of Ice and Fire, and despite being the shortest book in the series so far, it’s 807 pages long (not even counting the appendix), one of the longest books I’ve read yet. It’s a fantasy book, but doesn’t include so much fantasy that it requires much introduction to the concept of the world, though the amount of characters and the many plots and side-plots may confuse readers. It’s mainly set in the Seven Kingdoms, where the “game of thrones” is at its height, but also includes the story of the Wall, where monsters threaten to enter the Seven Kingdoms, a problem far greater than the many self-declared kings’ battle for the throne, but those who wish to sit on the throne or are embroiled in a battle against the current king for other reasons don’t realize the danger. The story of Daenerys and Viserys is also included; the only surviving children of the “Mad Iron King” Aerys Targaryen, they were forced to flee when he was defeated because of a rebellion after his cruel deeds, Daenerys only in her mother’s womb at the time, and Viserys’ plans to reclaim the throne and take vengeance of the killers of his close family troubles the current holders of the throne. At first, the story centers around the Eddard Stark’s family–Catelyn Stark, his wife, and his children, Robb Stark, Jon Snow, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Bran Stark, and Rickon Stark–but as the story progresses, it begins to include more stories about Daenerys and the royal court. I really enjoyed reading this book, although at first it was somewhat confusing, especially because of all the different characters, but the author really explains the subtleties behind the situation well. I would rate this book 9.8/10 and recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy, adventure, or suspense and has time to read a series that’s already 4,197 pages long and has two more books being planned.

Book Review ~~ I, Robot ~

Today I read the book “I, Robot,” by Isaac Asimov, a compilation of interesting short stories about robots and the various dilemmas that come with them, as well as the Three Laws of Robotics. In one story, a mind-reading robot is created, but, because it wasn’t supposed to cause harm to humans, lies and can’t give any information of use. After all, telling humans something they didn’t want to hear would hurt them emotionally. The robot had learned why it could read minds, information which could be incredibly useful to the company that created it, but he couldn’t tell them, because even the most skilled mathematicians in the company couldn’t figure it out, and explaining it would embarrass them and hurt their ego that a robot had managed something a human couldn’t. In the end, the robot went insane because the “robopsychologist” had discovered this and was angry at the robot for lying to her; she tormented it with the dilemma and it broke down. In another story, a new and expensive robot had had its potential to avoid danger increased so that staying safe was almost as important to it as following human orders. It had been given a order that wasn’t phrased so that it seemed urgent and involved a relatively risky amount of danger, inducing a drunken state that caused the robot to leave the area he was supposed to do work at as the potential for being damaged increased and begin to return as it lessened. Eventually, one of the field “roboticists” sent to test it sent himself into danger, because, since the First Law was to keep humans from harm at all times and was a great deal more important than the other two, to the robot, the robot had to save the human. I really enjoyed the many stories in this book and recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction or other stories of Isaac Asimov’s. I would rate it 9.7/10.

Book Review ~~ The Immortal Bard ~~

Today I read The Immortal Bard, a short science fiction story by Isaac Asimov that can be found in a variety of anthologies and collections, including “Earth Is Room Enough” and “The Complete Stories, Volume 1”. The story is about a physicist, Dr. Phineas Welch, who, while drunk, tells an English instructor, Scott Robertson, that he can bring back the dead. At first, he claims, he tried bringing back Archimedes, Newton, and Galileo, but while they were intrigued by the many developments in science since their time, the cultures were too different and Welch had to send them back. As a result, he tried bringing back Shakespeare, thinking that Shakespeare would have a “universal mind” and be able to live with people centuries in the future. Welch explained to Shakespeare that Shakespeare’s plays were held highly in regard even in modern times and that there were college courses on Shakespeare. Shakespeare had been fascinated at the idea, so Welch enrolled Shakespeare in one of Robertson’s classes on Shakespeare. Robertson, remembering a bald man with a brogue like Welch had described, began to wonder if it was simply a fantasy of Welch’s, when Welch explained that he’d had to send Shakespeare back to the seventeenth century. After Robertson asked why, Welch explained that Robertson had flunked Shakespeare! I really enjoyed the story’s humorous ending, since the idea of someone being flunked on their own work was extremely amusing as I read it. The story suggests that the hidden meanings everyone attributes to Shakespeare aren’t there at all, which I thought was a pretty interesting idea. I recommend it to anyone who likes Asimov or wants to read a lighthearted, funny story and would rate it 9.7/10.

Book Review ~~ Your Inner Fish ~~

I recently finished reading “Your Inner Fish”, by Neil Shubin, so I decided to simply write a short essay about the author’s argument on evolutionism in the book as a whole.In “Your Inner Fish”, Neil Shubin explains his reasoning behind his belief that humans, as well as other land-living animals, evolved from fish. He presents a variety of arguments, though two main arguments are mentioned throughout the book.

To begin with, animals, both those that live on land and those that live in water, share many genes, a piece of evidence that Shubin brings up throughout the book. For example, a gene known as Sonic hedgehog can be found in practically every animal, including humans and fish. Also, the Hox gene, a gene that controls where different body parts develop as well as their size, appears in every animal with a body. This seems to show that land-living animals evolved from animals that live in water or vice versa, since the they share genes, and since animals living in water appear in fossils earlier than animals living on land do, Shubin believes that humans and other land-living animals descended from fish.

In fact, the entire book centers around Tiktaalik, a fossil of a fish that has hands. Shubin believes that Tiktaalik is the intermediary between fish and land-living animals, like humans, and provides evidence of the fact that fish eventually evolved into humans; Tiktaalik’s neck and head were like early land-living animals’, while the fossil also had scales and fins, like fishes’. Meanwhile, Tiktaalik’s fin is a bit of a cross between a regular fish’s fin and an amphibian’s fin. Since Tiktaalik appears in fossils before land-living animals but after animals that live in the water, Tiktaalik is also in the correct time period to be an intermediary between humans and fish.

Clearly, Shubin presents a very good case about why humans and most other land-living animals descended from fish. To begin with, Tiktaalik is a fossil that seems to be an intermediary between animals that live in the water and animals that live on land. Furthermore, land-living animals share many genes with animals that live in water.

Book Review ~~ Handy Genes ~~

I recently read Handy Genes, which is the third chapter of “Your Inner Fish,” by Neil Shubin. The following essay is basically a detailed summary of the content in the third chapter:

In the mid-twentieth century, biologists were doing experiments with chicken eggs, cutting up the embryos and grafting tissues to other places to figure out what would happen if embryos’ development was interfered with. Chicken eggs were perfect for these experiments; they were large enough for biologists to carefully choose which parts to cut up and graft, protected by the eggshell, and available in large quantities everywhere. These experiments would become important to scientists studying evolution because the experiments eventually revealed that the basic genes in all animals are the same; they’re simply put to different uses in different animals.

Scientists performed a variety of experiments that eventually led to the discovery of a tissue that controlled how fingers and toes formed and made each finger different. One set of experiments, performed by a group of biologists that included Edgar Zwilling and John Saunders, revealed a tissue that controlled limb development. They removed it at different periods of development, and the earlier it was removed, the less of the limb had developed. Meanwhile, Mary Gasseling had discovered that if the tissue Zwilling and Saunders had found was moved to the opposite side, a mirror image of the limb would form. The tissue was named ZPA, and a variety of experiments were done with it to discover how it controlled the development of limbs, fingers, and toes. A variety of molecules were suggested, but none of them were capable enough.

Then, in the early 1990s, new technology became available for scientists to discover what was really going on with ZPA and how it controlled the development of fingers and toes. At that point, Tabin, McMahon, and Ingham came up with the idea of comparing the chickens to flies. One gene, called hedgehog, made one end of a fly’s body segment look different from the other, so the three laboratories began looking for a similar gene in chickens. They found one: Sonic hedgehog, which was active in the ZPA tissue. Knowing the structure of Sonic hedgehog, other researchers could look for it in animals with fingers, and they found the gene active in the ZPA tissue in every one of those animals.

At that point, Randy Dahn, who was part of Shubin’s lab, decided to connect skates, which have fins, with the fingered animals, which includes humans, to find an inner fish. He soon found a Sonic hedgehog gene in skates that did the same thing to the skates’ fins as the gene in fingered animals did to those animals’ fingers. Dahn knew that the skeletal rods in a skate fin looked alike, so would an injection of a mouse’s Sonic hedgehog gene make the rods develop differently? He tried it, putting a bead that leaked the protein in a skate embryo. After developing, the rods looked very different from one another, and the rods closer to the bead developed differently than the rods further away, just like they would for a person, meaning that the skate’s Sonic hedgehog genes were identical, or nearly identical, to a person’s Sonic hedgehog genes. Dahn had discovered that, when fish evolved into people, the genes stayed the same; they just did things in new ways.

The experiments done in the mid-twentieth century were important to the story of Your Inner Fish because they ultimately led to Dahl’s discovery that human genes and skate genes are similar and reinforce the idea that humans evolved from fish. The experiments also show that there are many connections between living animals, often in unexpected ways.

I really enjoyed reading Handy Genes and found it quite interesting as well as informative. It taught me a lot about genes and DNA, especially the genetic connection between humans and other animals, such as sharks, skates, chickens, and flies. At first, it was a bit hard to understand, since it’s filled with a variety of information, but after a while of rereading it became clear. I would recommend this chapter, and the entire book, to anyone interested in genetics, Tiktaalik, biology, evolution, or DNA and rate it 9.6/10.

Book Review ~~ The Glass Castle ~~

Today I read the book “The Glass Castle,” Jeannette Walls’s memoir of her life. If it had been fiction, I would still have enjoyed the book; since the book was a true story, it was a lot more real to me and showed me how hard some kids’ lives can be (even though I found Jeannette’s struggles to be full of hardship, there are people with lives far worse than hers). Despite all the problems in her life, though, many stemming from her family, the story really illustrated how close-knit her family was, even though her father was an alcoholic and the family was quite poor. Her story about her father, who was homeless on the streets at the time, managed to earn $1,000 from gambling in a week but gave it all to Jeannette because she hadn’t earned enough to go to college, was truly heartwarming, and the book was filled with times she and her siblings worked together to accomplish something; she and Brian teamed up against some bullies, and Jeannette, Brian, and Lori managed to travel to New York City because of how close the three siblings were. Overall, I thought the story was amazingly well-written, and I recommend it to just about everyone who wants to read a good, fairly long story. I would rate it 9.9/10.

Book Review ~~ Generation Me ~~

Today I read “Generation Me,” by Jean M. Twenge, which is, as the front cover states, about “Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before”. In this book, Twenge explains why young adults are so unprepared for the world they are thrown into after college and high school; although recent generations have been told that they’re special and can do anything because of self-esteem programs, in reality, they have to make difficult choices about having a child when two incomes can barely support a household. Many of the problems with “Generation Me” stem from the fact that they were taught to regard themselves as special and have a high self-esteem even if they did badly, receiving rewards for simply participating. Self-esteem programs have made Gen Me more prone to narcissism, and they expect to get more than a veteran would think is reasonable, since they’ve been raised with high expectations. Generation Me is less polite than previous generation, preferring directness, so members of different generations may not get on as well. However, there are also wonderful qualities in Generation Me’s culture. They’re a lot more accepting of other cultures, since they’ve been raised not to be prejudiced towards people of different races or genders, and being more open and loose about a lot of things isn’t always a bad thing. This book also offers advice for society as a whole as well as specific members of society, such as members of Generation Me and employers. I enjoyed the author’s analysis of Generation Me ad well as her suggestions for dealing with Gen Me. I would rate this book 9.7/10 and recommend it to anyone who’s part of Generation Me, wants to know how to deal with Generation Me or doesn’t know why people who are part of Generation Me behave the way they do.