Calling Bullshit by Jevin West and Carl Begstrom

The authors are academic at the University of Washington, USA.  In 2017 they offered an undergraduate course designed to encourage their students to take a more critical and analytical approach to the information they are presented with on a daily basis through all media outlets from Twitter to even highly respcted scientific journals like Nature. So committed are they to their cause that they have made the course freely available ,online (https://www.callingbullshit.org/videos.html). 

As the title of the book suggests, the authors take a light-hearted approach to the subject, using some ludicrous examples of how data can be, and frequently is, misrepresented and misinterpreted, sometimes for political reasons but often simply by media outlets to sensationalise and thus sell more copy or advertising space. But the underlyung principle is serious: that much information we are exposed to, whether deliberately or through ignorance lacks rigour and, as such, should at least be treated with scepticism and, at best, be seriously challenged. 

The authors teach scientific subjects but their message is equally applicable to anyone who deals with facts in whatever field. If you feel you would not be sufficiently confident to challenge bullshit once you have identified it, the authors provide a set of clear instructions on how anyone can do it. ❤❤❤❤❤

Klara and the Sun, a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro

The first Ishiguro novel I have read, despite multiple recommendations and his previous Nobel Prize. His many novels vary in their style and purpose.  This latest one has been much awaited and then much reviewed and interviewed about.  It is set loosely in the future, where children in particular have the facility to purchase and adopt an AF (artificial friend). This is a very-nearly-human robot with a repertoire of human capabilities and, more importantly, a limited repertoire of human emotions that are learned during the robot's life.

The novel certainly addresses the clichéd question of 'what it is to be human' but the author doesn't dwell too much on that issue. As readers we are fed information sparingly as we gradually realise that the AF Klara is solar-powered and therefore has developed a worship of the sun; the analogy with other religions adopted by humans is well portrayed in the many misunderstandings and implausible beliefs that Klara has in the sun's powers.  We also gradually learn that Klara's human owner, Josie, may be dying of an unidentified disease and that Klara has a destiny related to Josie's mother's attempts to deal with her daughter's death. Other characters come in and out of the plot, just as happens in life, without a full explanation of their roles or their fates. Hints are dropped about the characters' environment without everything being revealed. For example, we realise that some children are genetically manipulated ('lifted') to give them an advantage over others in education and employment, but we never learn if this is a benign or a dangerous phenomenon.  These  mysteries about exactly what is going on is a strength of the book though, rather than a weakness. 

The novelty of the book and what sets it aside from other dystopian tales, is the fact that the tale is narrated by the AF Klara herself. So we see how she learns to live in human society and gradually to develop some sort of emotional response to what she observes round about her.  Yet we also see how the conclusions she reaches about what she observes are quite fallacious in many cases.  She earns our sympathy as a result -- particularly at the end. ❤❤❤❤

Shuggie Bain: a novel by Douglas Stuart

Winner of this year's Booker Prize, this is a tale of child neglect set in the post-industrial ruined environment near Glasgow -- a place where I also grew up, although at a time when there was still some employment and some pre-Thatcher hope. The neglect of the title's character is by his mother Agnes, an alcoholic who, although her top priority is undoubtedly the care and welfare of her children, is unable to find the means to break from the society and the people she has become dependent on.  The reader is not spared the sordid details of Agnes's life -- the  unsuitable men, the multiple rapes, the abuse from neighbours, the failure to break free from her hopeless environment.

Nor are her children spared these details.  We see what happens to Agnes mainly through the eyes of Shuggie between the ages of about 8 to 16. We know that the outcome for him is not good; there is no happy ending to this miserable childhood.  His mother is the only source of affection (apart from a little short-lived care from his older brother) that he can rely on and he can rely on her for nothing else. 

The novel is not an enjoyable read.  It is an indictment of so many failures: in housing policy, in social services, in education, in the attitude of men to women and of women's acceptance of their situation. The boy Shuggie undoubtedly gains the sympathy of the reader, but, if the novel has a major flaw it is that it drifts fairly randomly from observations made by Shuggie to observations made by Agnes to descriptions of the activities of Shuggie's useless father and occasionally loses focus along the way. 

I suspect the author has said everything he needs to say in this first novel, but I would probably seek to read any others he chooses to write. ❤❤❤