I Am Legend is a difficult book to categorize. At first glance, it’s a vampire novel; an accurate characterization, because yeah, there are vampires in it. But the deeper meaning and metaphors behind them, the structure of the story, and the situation the main character finds himself in, make it feel more like a zombie story. But even then, the focus isn’t so much on the creatures, but on the main character and his inner struggles, making it more of a sappy drama. You could even argue convincingly that it’s science fiction.

Given these overlapping categories, and the fact that I Am Legend came out in 1954 and has influenced subsequent generations of horror fiction, it could easily feel stale and cliche reading it today. It doesn’t; I Am Legend still feels fresh and new, even to someone like me who has seen and read almost every piece of horror fiction released since I was born (and a lot from before that, too).

Part of its brilliance has to do with Matheson’s writing, which gets right into the main character’s head, and feels just detailed and realistic enough to relate to. There is also some ineffable eeriness to it. Certain mental images – like pudgy Ben Cortman standing outside, constantly yelling at Neville to come out – stick with me in a way that other authors’ don’t, for some reason. I Am Legend should be required reading for anyone even remotely interested in the horror genre.

A note about the upcoming movie of I Am Legend starring Will Smith: WTF? Judging from the trailer, the movie has almost nothing to do with the book. Will Smith can be an OK actor, but I really can’t picture him pulling off the depressed, alcoholic, sexually frustrated, elderly Robert Neville from the book. No, I picture the Will Smith version romping around destroyed New York with his dog buddy (who must have had a good agent, because his role in the movie seems significantly expanded from his book counterpart), sharing feel-good moments, screaming “Aw HELL naw!” whenever he sees a vampire, then punching them in the face and spouting hilarious lines like “welcome to Earth”. And that is really the opposite sort of character from the one in the book. I like a good end-of-the-world movie, and I’d probably be excited about this one if it didn’t have the title “I Am Legend.” It’d be better if it had only claimed to be loosely based on the novel, and had a title like…oh I dunno… “Fresh Prince of the Entire World.”

I’ll keep this short, since anyone who’s into Harry Potter will have already read this book, or will read it soon.

Deathly Hallows is pretty much what you’d expect from the last Harry Potter book. Almost every character and location from the series shows up in one form or another, even if only for a few paragraphs, as if to see them one last time before saying goodbye. It’s not arbitrary, though, and each paragraph has its purpose in setting up the inevitable final confrontation. I wouldn’t call it a mind-blowing finale that puts every other book to shame (though it has its twists and moments of brilliance), nor would I say Rowling is a flawless writer, but she does do some things better than almost anyone else.

First, she makes characters you care about. Harry is likable and realistic, and Rowling’s unwavering insistence on telling everything from Harry’s perspective only enhances that. Other characters are full of personality, even if only given a few lines of dialogue. This ability to create fleshed out characters strengthens the emotional impact when any of them succeed – or fail (and there are plenty of failures here). Second, she creates a cohesive world. There is a complex web of family trees, historical events, and magical rules that loop back on themselves and get described from different perspectives, but somehow it all manages to fit together and avoid contradicting itself. Third, and most importantly, Rowling manages to weave these characters into this world, setting up a cascade of mysteries and questions that slowly fall into place as the plot plays out. It’s amazing that she can take all this information and form it into a flowing story both within each book and across the whole series. Harry Potter never has that “I’m making this shit up as I go along” feel to it (sorry, I love you Stephen King, but I’m looking at you here), and I almost believe Rowling when she says that the entire 7-book story popped into her head fully formed during a train ride.

One recommendation if you haven’t read Deathly Hallows yet: Read the previous books first, even if you’ve read them before. Or at least Half Blood Prince. Details from that book especially come into play in this one, and although it’s not impossible to follow what’s going on, it’ll be less of a mental workout if you have it fresh in your mind.

I have no doubt that the Harry Potter series will be right up there with Star Wars, the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings as a classic, timeless accomplishment in fantasy. Soon, all the scary fan worship that goes along with it will kick in (e.g., Harry Potter conventions, obsession with mundane details, fan fiction, and dressing up as scantily clad characters of the opposite gender). Still, its popularity is well deserved.

I’ll try not to write much here, since this book has already been written about way too much. Briefly, my opinion is that this book doesn’t break a whole lot of new ground, but it puts some common arguments for atheism in popular language and is an enjoyable read. For the most part, it’s well-argued and well-written, and I would recommend it to anyone remotely interested in religion.

Where I think some people may have a problem, however, is that Richard can be a real dick about it sometimes. He tries to remain respectful to religion, and does OK for the most part, but the book is still full of snarky little comments putting down religious folk. While these can be funny, it would have been nice to see someone argue a position without explicitly putting down the opposing position.

In addition, sometimes he can get a little too informal and end up undermining his own arguments. For example, in a section about the consolation that religion can provide, he mentions that there are both happy atheists and miserable atheists; happy Christians and miserable Christians; etc etc. Then he ponders whether, in general, atheists are less happy than religious people, and writes something like “there might be statistical evidence for this. I dunno! But I bet all religions would be about the same.” Dude. You’re a scientist. Look it up. Especially in a book relying on the idea that beliefs should be supported by hard evidence, the least he could do is look up some evidence rather than relying on his hunches. (Incidentally, I did look it up, and as with most things in science, the link between religion and happiness is complicated).

However, don’t take this to mean that Dawkins is some extremist atheist who relies on blind faith as much as many strict adherents to a religion do. The cores of his arguments are grounded in scientific evidence and valid reasoning. In other words, his beliefs are based on reality – the same reality that anyone else can observe, verify, and would likely draw the same beliefs from if they really thought about it. Because of this, most of what Dawkins concludes is almost certainly true.

“Almost” is a key word here. Dawkins himself never becomes so convinced in his own reasoning that he leaves no room to be proven wrong. When speaking of the existence of God, he admits the old cliche that “you can’t prove a negative”; i.e., you can’t conclusively disprove God’s existence. So, he explains why there almost certainly is no God.

[TANGENT] I’m no philosopher, but I have always been confused by the “can’t prove a negative” thing. If something’s existence entails definite, observable consequences, and those consequences are not observed, then that thing’s existence is disproven. It’s a valid argument of the form “If A then B…Not B…Therefore Not A”. So if I say my god is infallible, and she said she would appear to me on March 1st 2007 in the form of a talking polar bear sitting on my front lawn eating Cheetos, and I don’t see this polar bear (which, by the way, I don’t), then my god certainly does not exist. It’s proven. Of course, this only applies to my god, not all gods, which is perhaps what the “can’t prove a negative” rule is really talking about. And perhaps it does not apply to the Christian God, which, I think, has been intelligently designed to avoid positing many concrete observable consquences, and vaguely defined enough to wiggle out of any failures to observe the few that exist. [/TANGENT]

Dawkins provides some good arguements showing why there is no reason to believe that God exists, and perhaps more importantly, shooting down some of the popular arguments for His existence. It probably won’t convince anyone to change their mind, but perhaps atheists can clarify their reasons for believing what they do, and religious people can better understand why atheists disagree with them (and, if they care about justifying their beliefs with reason, try to prepare counterarguments to Dawkins’ in order to strengthen their reasoned faith).

I would recommend the book to atheists, religious people, and people like me who are less easily labeled. At the very least, it will make you think about your own beliefs, which, I believe, is always a good thing.

Wow. I’m always blown away after reading books about parapsychology. This is no exception.

Entangled Minds is almost like 3 books in one. It starts with a brief overview of what psi (i.e., phenomena like ESP and PK) is, with some examples, and an even briefer review of parapsychology’s relatively long history. Radin is constantly pointing out that parapsychology research has been endorsed and conducted by top-notch scientists, including a surprising number of Nobel laureates. This might be seen as overly defensive, but it is necessary, given the common “no real scientists believe in psi” criticism. On the contrary, my experience has shown that the most vocal opponents of parapsychology are magicians, armchair “scientists”, and other people with no scientific training. Radin points out that the most vocal proponents of psi, on the other hand, are the best that science has to offer.

The second part of the book is sort of a meta-analysis of meta-analyses of psi research. He goes over some of the major categories of psi research that have been conducted, such as dream studies (where one person tries to influence another person’s dreams at a distance), presentiment (reacting physiologically to, say, a shocking picture, a few seconds before seeing the randomly selected picture), global consciousness (e.g. random number generators all over the world acted strangely on September 11th, 2001), and lots more.

This part of the book should blow the mind of anyone not already familiar with the research. It gives me chills even though I am. Radin shows that the results found would be astronomically improbable if chance alone were operating. Since chance is ruled out, he meticulously goes through alternate explanations (a bias in publishing, fraud, shitty experimental designs, etc.) and either rules them out completely or shows that even if they played a role, they cannot explain the overall results. The take-home message is that things like telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis really do exist. Not only that, but they have been clearly demonstrated in laboratories all over the world.

The strange thing is, from what I can tell, parapsychology research is conducted much more carefully than most psychology research. The effects in parapsychology are proven to exist to a greater degree than many effects in psychology. And, no offense to psychology, but parapsychology has the potential for discoveries of much greater importance, both scientifically and practically. Yet parapsychology is shunned, receiving a minuscule amount of funding and mainstream attention, while psychology thrives. I guess this is motivated by the same fear of the unknown that (temporarily) kept Copernicus from telling people that the earth isn’t the center of the universe. But geeze…get over it.

Anyway…Radin does rely on quite a bit of math to get his points across, but it is not too deep and he explains it briefly beforehand. It should be easy to understand even for people with no knowledge of statistics. My only complaint is that most of the information was also included in Radin’s previous book, “The Conscious Universe”. The title of Entangled Minds implies that it will primarily be about the relationship between quantum physics and psi, but in reality most of the book is spent establishing that psi exists. The examples here are different and it is a good reference for “proof-oriented” psi research, but he really could have said “see my other book for proof, which I will now connect to the latest advancements in physics”.

When he does get on to the physics stuff though, it satisfies the purpose that the title implies. Quantum physics is spooky enough on its own. Particles can be everywhere at once (or nowhere) until they are observed. A particle can be correlated with the observation of another particle that is miles away, with no communication between them. The observation of a particle in the future can even seem to affect a particle in the past. All this is stuff that mainstream physicists know and accept.

Radin essentially takes what we know about particles and expands it to a larger scale, including, of course, us. His main argument is that every particle in the universe is “entangled” (i.e. able to have the spooky correlations above) with every other particle. There is more to it, but at the very least, this makes it possible for psi to exist without overturning everything we know about science.

It’s explained quite well, and he even manages to get across some very confusing quantum phenomena in a pretty intuitive manner (though I don’t think quantum physics will ever be entirely intuitive to our big classical brains). If I had to complain, though, I would point out that he leaves some things ambiguous. For example, at one point he seems to imply that our unconscious is “in tune” with the entire universe, but we tend to focus on things familiar to us (such as a distant family member in trouble) for psychological reasons. We essentially filter out everything except the important stuff. But then later, he implies that people who are frequently physically close in spacetime are “more entangled” with each other. So which is it? Are we equally entangled with everything, but able to psychologically focus on familiar things, or are things that are physically close more entangled? Both?

(Side note: If it’s the 2nd possibility, it would be fun to test. Have two people in close physical proximity for a few hours, maybe separated by an opaque wall, with half of them being aware of it and half not. Later, pair them up for a ganzfeld or something. Would mere prior proximity improve performance? What about later proximity?)

If little issues like this can be worked out, and details filled in, Radin could be well on the way to providing what could be considered the holy grail of parapsychology: An actual theory of how it works, with testable predictions. Scientists could go beyond proving that psi exists, and move on to figuring out how it works. Perhaps they’ll even bypass the scientific bickering and move on to practical applications. Personally, I am getting sick of moving my physical body every time I wanna turn on a light. A psychic light switch would be so much nicer.

Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough. This book is well worth reading for anyone even remotely interested in science of any kind.

[Disclaimer] (in case future academic employers read this): I’m not directly involved in parapsychology. I’m not a believer in the subject matter of parapsychology, per se. I do believe in science and its methods, though, no matter what the topic of study. While there may be disagreement about what the results of parapsychology represent, anyone who reads and understands the literature would have to agree that something interesting is going on. I am not fully decided on whether I think that “something” is purely psychological, statistical, or paranormal, but any of these possibilities are fascinating and deserving of attention. [/Disclaimer]

I picked up this book for a few cents at a flea market, because I hadn’t read a Dean Koontz novel in a long time, but remembered liking the ones I read as a kid.

Sole Survivor is about a dude whose family was killed in a plane crash. On the one year anniversary of the crash, he finds that he’s being followed, and strange things are happening. The book starts out slow, but picks up in pace and scope, and is good light entertainment. I had fun reading it, but I’ll probably forget I ever saw it in a few weeks.

Koontz is an OK author, but I often find myself taken out of the story by excessively cheesy metaphors. Most of the ending of the book also violates the big “show, don’t tell” rule by having one mystery after another explained flashback-style. It would have been nice to have the climax of the book happen “on-camera”, so to speak. Maybe if there were less words wasted on describing how the wind is like a pack of wolves, there’d be room to have the characters actually participate in the plot.

Still, it ain’t a bad read.