Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1097 - October Book Club: Fiction Ain't That Bad
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
- 0:07Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
- 0:10Speaker 2: once answers.
- 0:11Speaker 1: Now today I'm a Happy Families podcast. We're letting go
- 0:15Speaker 1: of parenting. Well, I think we are letting go of
- 0:18Speaker 1: parenting and just focusing on us for a minute. It's
- 0:21Speaker 1: the book club podcast where Kylie and I talk about
- 0:24Speaker 1: the things that we've been reading, what we've loved, what
- 0:26Speaker 1: we haven't. It's unfiltered. I always feel a little bit
- 0:29Speaker 1: guilty about this because when I talk badly about a book,
- 0:31Speaker 1: I just know how hard it is to write a book.
- 0:33Speaker 1: I'm currently slowly dying over the book that I'm writing,
- 0:37Speaker 1: and I would just be so devastated if somebody said, yeah,
- 0:39Speaker 1: I didn't like it, wasn't that good? And yet that's
- 0:42Speaker 1: the whole idea right. Book club gives you an opportunity
- 0:45Speaker 1: to talk about the stuff that you're reading. Kylie. You
- 0:48Speaker 1: you usually give me a hard time because I have
- 0:50Speaker 1: approximately eight to fifteen books each time we do this.
- 0:53Speaker 1: I don't have so many this time, but you, on
- 0:56Speaker 1: the other hand, have four, So you're up. What have
- 0:58Speaker 1: you got for us?
- 0:59Speaker 2: Well, I've had to make up because I haven't been
- 1:01Speaker 2: doing a lot of reading lately, and the last few
- 1:03Speaker 2: times I've cheated a little bit because I've had to
- 1:05Speaker 2: use homeschool reads to even have a contribution.
- 1:09Speaker 1: Je I know. Hey, speaking of homeschool reads, I've just
- 1:12Speaker 1: picked up Lord of the Flies. I'm not talking about
- 1:14Speaker 1: it today because I'm only forty pages in, but it's
- 1:16Speaker 1: an exceptionally good book I hated at high school, but
- 1:19Speaker 1: my goodness, I'm loving it anyway. So have you got
- 1:21Speaker 1: homeschool reads for us again?
- 1:23Speaker 2: No, I don't. In my list of four, I actually
- 1:25Speaker 2: have two that you've already spoken about on the podcast,
- 1:28Speaker 2: so I'm actually just going to kind of just briefly
- 1:31Speaker 2: mention them.
- 1:31Speaker 1: So these are books that I read, These are books
- 1:33Speaker 1: that you read.
- 1:34Speaker 2: I started to pick up based on your recommendation. I
- 1:36Speaker 2: thought i'd give them a go.
- 1:38Speaker 1: Here we go.
- 1:38Speaker 2: What was So? The first one was The Measure by
- 1:41Speaker 2: Niki Erlick.
- 1:41Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love this book.
- 1:43Speaker 2: So this was a really provocative read. It was actually
- 1:47Speaker 2: first published in twenty twenty two, so I wonder if
- 1:50Speaker 2: COVID and the pandemic worldwide pandemic actually had anything to
- 1:54Speaker 2: do with influencing the storyline way she wrote it.
- 1:59Speaker 1: The short part of the plot here is that everybody
- 2:01Speaker 1: wakes up one morning and there's a box on their
- 2:03Speaker 1: doorstep with a piece of string inside it, and the
- 2:05Speaker 1: string shows you the measure of your life, how long
- 2:07Speaker 1: essentially you're going to live. And then people start to
- 2:11Speaker 1: live their lives accordingly, and there's this polarization around how
- 2:15Speaker 1: people respond to people with short strings versus long strings,
- 2:18Speaker 1: and who should get what government benefits, and it's just
- 2:20Speaker 1: a fascinating I loved it, great original thought experiment.
- 2:24Speaker 2: Well, it also kind of looked into how different countries
- 2:27Speaker 2: handled it and the impact that it had on individuals
- 2:32Speaker 2: and collectively as a country. It looked at different families
- 2:37Speaker 2: and different couples, like how they coped with it and
- 2:40Speaker 2: dealt with it. Firstly, I actually found it a really
- 2:43Speaker 2: hard read. I found it really hard to get into it.
- 2:47Speaker 2: You're following eight different characters, and so it's one of
- 2:50Speaker 2: those books where each chapter is written from a different
- 2:53Speaker 2: characters perspective. I had never read a book with so
- 2:56Speaker 2: many characters to try and follow, So I'm going to
- 3:00Speaker 2: put it down to the fact that I had very
- 3:01Speaker 2: limited headspace as well, because by the time I got
- 3:05Speaker 2: to the last one hundred pages, I couldn't put it down,
- 3:08Speaker 2: and I think that things were starting to pick up
- 3:09Speaker 2: for me in my own personal life. But the one
- 3:14Speaker 2: down for me is there is actually a huge amount
- 3:17Speaker 2: of swearing. So if you're not someone who actually enjoys
- 3:19Speaker 2: that kind of writing, hopefully you've got someone who's a
- 3:24Speaker 2: sense of a reader as you are and has gone
- 3:26Speaker 2: through it and scrubbed out all of the bad words
- 3:29Speaker 2: for you. Thankshn, That made it much easier to die
- 3:32Speaker 2: jet out. But I think ultimately, like I said, very provocative,
- 3:39Speaker 2: there were so many opportunities to kind of just think
- 3:42Speaker 2: through how you would deal with this, and like I said,
- 3:46Speaker 2: for me, it kind of really highlighted some of the
- 3:48Speaker 2: challenges that we'd experienced as a community with COVID and
- 3:51Speaker 2: the different ways even just within our own country, different
- 3:54Speaker 2: states dealt with things, and the impact moving forward that
- 3:58Speaker 2: that has created different families, individuals and communities as a whole.
- 4:03Speaker 2: So the big question, Honey, is would you open your box?
- 4:08Speaker 1: I asked you the same question on the podcast ages ago,
- 4:11Speaker 1: and I don't remember what you said, but I said no,
- 4:14Speaker 1: I don't want to know. I want to live my
- 4:16Speaker 1: life without that, without the reassure. I just know. The
- 4:21Speaker 1: short answer is no, I wouldn't want to know. Yeah,
- 4:26Speaker 1: have you read the book and How to Change Your Heart?
- 4:27Speaker 1: What do you think?
- 4:28Speaker 2: No, No, not at all. I just think because most
- 4:31Speaker 2: people were opening their boxes, I probably would have just
- 4:33Speaker 2: done it without even really thinking about it. It wouldn't
- 4:36Speaker 2: have been in the beginning for me, I don't think
- 4:38Speaker 2: it would have been a huge big deal. But obviously
- 4:42Speaker 2: the longer people chose not to open it, the bigger
- 4:45Speaker 2: it actually became. So for me, ultimately, it's really a
- 4:50Speaker 2: story about how do you measure a life? And I
- 4:52Speaker 2: know it sounds a little bit cliche, but that whole
- 4:55Speaker 2: idea of do you measure a life in the years
- 4:58Speaker 2: lived or the way you choose to live your life?
- 5:01Speaker 2: Like I really just ultimately, if you know you've only
- 5:05Speaker 2: got a handful of days or a handful of months
- 5:07Speaker 2: or or whatever, does that impact the way you choose
- 5:11Speaker 2: to spend your time and who you choose to spend
- 5:14Speaker 2: it with. And I was just I thought there was
- 5:16Speaker 2: definitely some really great opportunities for introspective thinking about how
- 5:23Speaker 2: you choose to live your life and how you choose
- 5:24Speaker 2: to use the time that you've been gifted.
- 5:26Speaker 1: What did you give it have five?
- 5:29Speaker 2: Four?
- 5:29Speaker 1: Okay, I go four. I'm five all the way. I
- 5:32Speaker 1: loved it. I thought it was a great book. What's
- 5:33Speaker 1: your second one?
- 5:34Speaker 2: Well, I picked up a Nicholas Spark's book at the
- 5:39Speaker 2: book co op second hand.
- 5:41Speaker 1: I'm laughing at that.
- 5:42Speaker 2: Go on. It's called The Rescue.
- 5:44Speaker 1: It sounds great.
- 5:46Speaker 2: And I'm just gonna put out that I really love
- 5:47Speaker 2: a good romance. Yes, And after having read the Measure
- 5:52Speaker 2: and really working hard to get through it, I knew
- 5:56Speaker 2: that I just needed something really easy, light, and something
- 5:59Speaker 2: that would kind of just allow me to keep flowing.
- 6:02Speaker 2: So this was a really easy Yes. It was actually
- 6:05Speaker 2: really really again a thoughtful story. A firefighter with the
- 6:08Speaker 2: tragic pass and he finds himself compelled to save people
- 6:12Speaker 2: from his fate.
- 6:14Speaker 1: Sounds original, sounds sounds you're so harsh, I know, all right.
- 6:18Speaker 1: I kind of just want to find out what you
- 6:20Speaker 1: gave it out of five so we can move on
- 6:22Speaker 1: to another.
- 6:24Speaker 2: It was everything you expect from Nicholas part that's my point,
- 6:27Speaker 2: and I would give it a three and a half.
- 6:29Speaker 2: That's easy read.
- 6:31Speaker 1: You've got two more and we're really tight on top.
- 6:33Speaker 2: Well, I'm not going to talk too much about Troubled
- 6:35Speaker 2: by Rob Henderson. Again another book that you read, very
- 6:38Speaker 2: different style to what I would normally pick up.
- 6:41Speaker 1: Just before you go on Trouble by Rob Henderson five
- 6:44Speaker 1: out of five, ten out of ten one of the
- 6:47Speaker 1: just a brilliant memoir. From my perspective. Did you agree
- 6:50Speaker 1: or disagree? No?
- 6:51Speaker 2: I thought it was a really really good book. I
- 6:53Speaker 2: loved it until the last handful of chapters where he
- 6:56Speaker 2: goes all psychology, well.
- 7:00Speaker 1: Gone, all ivy league. He's a big shot PhD psychology
- 7:04Speaker 1: guy in.
- 7:04Speaker 2: Yeah, up until that point, he had me completely hooked
- 7:07Speaker 2: and then he lost me. Right, Okay, so I probably
- 7:10Speaker 2: I almost didn't finish the book wow, because I just
- 7:14Speaker 2: he just it's gone from a memoir now to you know,
- 7:18Speaker 2: a full on science textbook.
- 7:21Speaker 1: I didn't think that it was that hard, but but
- 7:24Speaker 1: then again, I've got a PhD in psychology. Are you
- 7:27Speaker 1: glad you read that? I read it, though? Was it
- 7:29Speaker 1: worth pushing through the end?
- 7:31Speaker 2: I think it's really important for us to see people's
- 7:36Speaker 2: lives from different perspectives and to delve into different ways
- 7:42Speaker 2: of living. This was so like, so outside the box
- 7:46Speaker 2: of anything that I've personally experienced in my life and
- 7:50Speaker 2: so tragic in so many ways. And it kind of
- 7:54Speaker 2: had me thinking because we have associated with different people
- 7:57Speaker 2: who've either been foster cares or kids who've lived in
- 8:00Speaker 2: foster homes with friends with our children, and just watching
- 8:04Speaker 2: it from afar, not really understanding why certain decisions are
- 8:09Speaker 2: made and why it just seems so transient, right when
- 8:17Speaker 2: there are families who are really happy to keep children
- 8:20Speaker 2: in their care for long times. And so he really
- 8:23Speaker 2: just kind of helped me see different the thought process
- 8:26Speaker 2: behind it. I don't agree with it necessarily, but just
- 8:28Speaker 2: the thought process behind why government organizations make the decisions
- 8:33Speaker 2: they do, but ultimately devastating.
- 8:36Speaker 1: It's a book that I read so highly. I'm so
- 8:38Speaker 1: glad that you read it and persistent with it. Really
- 8:40Speaker 1: really great stuff. Troubled Rob Henderson. Okay, fourth and final,
- 8:44Speaker 1: the last one.
- 8:44Speaker 2: For you is The Winter Dress. It's by Lauren Chater.
- 8:48Speaker 2: I actually loved this more fiction. It's actually a novel
- 8:51Speaker 2: written about a address that was found on a shipwreck
- 8:57Speaker 2: obviously deep under the sea, completely in tacked from the
- 9:00Speaker 2: seventeen hundreds, and how the historians went about trying to
- 9:06Speaker 2: find its original owner. And it was just a really
- 9:10Speaker 2: really cool story going through the process of I guess
- 9:13Speaker 2: that treasure hunt process of trying to piece together minute
- 9:20Speaker 2: details that would ultimately give you the big picture. And
- 9:24Speaker 2: I could see how people who are inclined in that
- 9:29Speaker 2: way could have so much fun, Like just real, it's
- 9:35Speaker 2: like going on a treasure hunt.
- 9:37Speaker 1: It's funny listening to you because you've read three fiction
- 9:39Speaker 1: and one nonfiction and memoir and I don't know why,
- 9:42Speaker 1: but I'm so automatically dismissive of fiction, and yet there's
- 9:47Speaker 1: so much there except for that Nicholas Sparks want to
- 9:48Speaker 1: call it, But I love here. What did you give
- 9:51Speaker 1: the windows dress? Out of them?
- 9:52Speaker 2: Look, I'm going to give it a five out of five.
- 9:54Speaker 1: Wow.
- 9:54Speaker 2: I actually loved this book. Wow, I really loved it
- 9:57Speaker 2: from start to finish. It was so well written.
- 10:00Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting that, and.
- 10:02Speaker 2: It was such, like I said, just such a different
- 10:04Speaker 2: storyline so historically, you know, kind of sound had some
- 10:08Speaker 2: great relationship connections in there, which I enjoy. I really
- 10:13Speaker 2: enjoyed the mystery behind the piece and Howard ended up
- 10:17Speaker 2: there and how a lazy historian wants to just attack
- 10:22Speaker 2: it on to what would be the obvious answer, and
- 10:25Speaker 2: yet another kind of younger historian has decided that that
- 10:29Speaker 2: definitely doesn't fit the bill. There is more to the story.
- 10:32Speaker 1: A seventeen hundred textile mystery, The Winter Dress Lauren Chad
- 10:36Speaker 1: five out of five. Now you've spoken so long about
- 10:44Speaker 1: your four books that I've barely got any time for
- 10:46Speaker 1: my book club, Coylie, and that.
- 10:49Speaker 2: Well, have you got eight books?
- 10:51Speaker 1: No? No, I don't. And the reason for that is
- 10:53Speaker 1: because three of the books that I've read in the
- 10:56Speaker 1: last little while have had religious orientations, and I'm just
- 10:59Speaker 1: not going to talk about them. But I am going
- 11:00Speaker 1: to talk really quickly about two. I'm just going to three.
- 11:05Speaker 1: I'm going to mention three, but I'm going to do
- 11:06Speaker 1: it really fast. Okay, the first one is very quick
- 11:08Speaker 1: and easy to talk about. Every now and again a
- 11:11Speaker 1: memoir pops onto my shelf that I think, oh my goodness,
- 11:14Speaker 1: this is going to be incredible. So in this book,
- 11:16Speaker 1: I read two hundred pages of a two hundred and
- 11:18Speaker 1: eighty page book. This memoir is about a guy, Sandy Greenberg.
- 11:23Speaker 1: He's because of medical misfortune and poor choices, ends up
- 11:28Speaker 1: blind at the age of nineteen. He goes on to
- 11:30Speaker 1: live this incredible life. I mean an extraordinary, extraordinary life.
- 11:34Speaker 1: Unfortunately the book was He may have had an amazing life,
- 11:37Speaker 1: but the autobiography was dull, and especially after reading some
- 11:41Speaker 1: of the autobiographies that I've read this year Jane ferguson
- 11:43Speaker 1: No Ordinary Assignment. We talked just before about Rob Henderson
- 11:48Speaker 1: and Troubled and some journalistic brilliance from people like Hannah Barnes.
- 11:52Speaker 1: With time to think, it just it was a bit
- 11:54Speaker 1: of a disappointment. I stopped reading, didn't even finish the book,
- 11:57Speaker 1: and I know that I was getting in to the
- 11:58Speaker 1: best bit, but I just keep going with it. So
- 12:00Speaker 1: that's the first one. It was called Hello Darkness, my
- 12:03Speaker 1: old Friend. And the reason it had that title is
- 12:06Speaker 1: because he was roommates at university with Garth Uncle. And
- 12:11Speaker 1: again there's this incredible opportunity to tell this amazing story.
- 12:15Speaker 1: I mean, he helped fund the beginning of Garfuncle's career
- 12:17Speaker 1: with Paul Simon. They sang Bridge over Troubled Waters and
- 12:20Speaker 1: Sounds of Silence and all that sort of stuff, and
- 12:22Speaker 1: it just wasn't there. It was lacking. Ah, there was
- 12:24Speaker 1: so much potential for I wanted to be so good.
- 12:27Speaker 2: Used that title, Yeah, yeah.
- 12:30Speaker 1: Yeah, walked away from it. The next book I want
- 12:33Speaker 1: to mention is called The ex pat Kylie was a novel.
- 12:36Speaker 1: I picked up a novel because I've been reading so
- 12:38Speaker 1: much heavy stuff.
- 12:39Speaker 2: Just like you give me a hard time, and it was.
- 12:43Speaker 1: A spy novel, do you know what. It was really fun,
- 12:45Speaker 1: it was easy to read. I'm going to give it
- 12:46Speaker 1: a four out of five. It was really fascinating to
- 12:48Speaker 1: consider the implications of corporate espionage. So this is a
- 12:52Speaker 1: book that's about Asian Americans being contacted by the Chinese
- 12:58Speaker 1: Communist government. These Asian Americans are working in some of
- 13:01Speaker 1: the biggest companies in the United States, and they're essentially
- 13:04Speaker 1: being asked to come back to China and bring all
- 13:06Speaker 1: of the corporate secrets from the big American companies with them.
- 13:09Speaker 1: It was really intriguing, like a really compelling and you
- 13:12Speaker 1: sort of think about spies with all the government secrets
- 13:15Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But when you look at what's going
- 13:17Speaker 1: on from a corporate perspective and a stock market perspective,
- 13:20Speaker 1: you can see how this is so compelling. I really
- 13:23Speaker 1: got into it. I really like it.
- 13:24Speaker 2: How do you decide you're going to be a spy?
- 13:26Speaker 1: Four out of five. I reckon I could have given
- 13:28Speaker 1: it more, but it was a novel, so it's going
- 13:31Speaker 1: to be pretty good novel to get more than four
- 13:32Speaker 1: out of five in my book, my five out of
- 13:34Speaker 1: five book for the last month or so, you had
- 13:36Speaker 1: one of those. Yeah, Yeah, this was an incredible book.
- 13:38Speaker 1: It was called The Weirdest People in the World by
- 13:42Speaker 1: a Harvard anthropologist.
- 13:43Speaker 2: You tell me this was so hard to get through.
- 13:45Speaker 1: For Joseph Henry it was extremely hard. Probably too Dan's
- 13:49Speaker 1: probably too long, and I'm still giving it five out
- 13:51Speaker 1: of five. Anyway, Weird, weirdest people in the World. Weird
- 13:54Speaker 1: stands for Western educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. And what
- 13:57Speaker 1: he's basically done is he's picked up where Guns Germs
- 14:00Speaker 1: and Still left off.
- 14:03Speaker 2: No.
- 14:03Speaker 1: Jared Diamond wrote Guns, Germs and Steel, which I think
- 14:05Speaker 1: is one of the most important books that I've ever written.
- 14:07Speaker 1: It's incredible, ever read. Did I say I've ever written?
- 14:11Speaker 1: I wish I'd written that that I've ever read, powerful, profound,
- 14:15Speaker 1: and it traces the history of why nations have succeeded
- 14:18Speaker 1: or failed. And you know what Guns Germs and Steel
- 14:21Speaker 1: did is it turns the narrative that we get in
- 14:25Speaker 1: our schools the stuff that our kids are being taught about,
- 14:28Speaker 1: the history of the world, history of civilization's, history of cultures.
- 14:33Speaker 1: I mean, it's really politically incorrect, but the evidence that
- 14:35Speaker 1: he it turns it all on its head and it's brilliant. Anyway.
- 14:39Speaker 1: This one picks up from where he left off, and
- 14:42Speaker 1: Joseph Heinrich looks at essentially the psychological changes that have
- 14:47Speaker 1: happened in the last couple of thousand years as civilization
- 14:50Speaker 1: did what Jared Diamond talked about in Guns, Germs and
- 14:54Speaker 1: Steel and why We are So Weird? He really highlights
- 14:56Speaker 1: it if we live in a Western educated, industrialized, rich
- 14:59Speaker 1: democratic nation, that we are the weird ones compared with
- 15:03Speaker 1: the rest of the history of the world and the
- 15:05Speaker 1: rest of the cultures that even exist now, we are
- 15:08Speaker 1: so weird in our psychology compared to what the world
- 15:10Speaker 1: has always been. It's just extraordinary. It's really, really, really
- 15:16Speaker 1: hard to read because it is so detailed. It's extremely serious.
- 15:20Speaker 1: It's a really heavy read, nothing easy about it, but
- 15:24Speaker 1: worth the slog, absolutely worth it. And again it has
- 15:29Speaker 1: further revolutionized my understanding of how the world is how
- 15:33Speaker 1: it is, and it also makes me more and more
- 15:35Speaker 1: infuriated when I look at some of the things that
- 15:37Speaker 1: people say on social media, or some of the things
- 15:39Speaker 1: that the mainstream media will say, our journalists will say,
- 15:42Speaker 1: or some of the things that are taught in our schools.
- 15:45Speaker 1: Because this is not some guy with an agenda. This
- 15:48Speaker 1: is deep, real research. It's evidence based research. It's not
- 15:53Speaker 1: just some speculation. And I loved it. The Weirdest People
- 15:56Speaker 1: in the World five out of five amazing book. It
- 16:00Speaker 1: is our book club for today. Thank you Kylie for
- 16:02Speaker 1: sharing your four books, including The Measure, Rob Henderson, The
- 16:06Speaker 1: Winter Dress, and what.
- 16:09Speaker 2: Was that of the one the Rescue?
- 16:10Speaker 1: Oh, that's right, the Nicholas whatever his name is, Yeah, okay,
- 16:14Speaker 1: and my ones will link to them in the show notes.
- 16:16Speaker 1: We've got The Expat by Hanson, she We've got.
- 16:19Speaker 2: You know what.
- 16:19Speaker 1: We won't even link to Sandy Greenberg, which just wann't
- 16:21Speaker 1: that great, but we will definitely link to The Weirdest
- 16:23Speaker 1: People in the World by Joseph Henrik. Hopefully there's some
- 16:26Speaker 1: inspo there for we to dive into and read as
- 16:30Speaker 1: we move towards I don't know, the end of the year,
- 16:32Speaker 1: something for Christmas Stocking, maybe The Happy Family. His podcast
- 16:35Speaker 1: is produced by Justin Ruhland from Bridge Media. For more
- 16:37Speaker 1: information about the stuff we've talked about, check the show notes. Otherwise,
- 16:40Speaker 1: visit us at our Facebook page, Doctor Justin Colson's Happy
- 16:43Speaker 1: Families