Books!

I'm back, folks. There's been a lot going on recently, including a move to the next town over, where we finally have a big old apartment with real couches. We've been working hard on moving in and setting up, playing hockey, doing homework, and just now can finally relax a little bit. There's always more to be done, but at least we're off from school this week and hockey is winding down. I'm starting to feel like this place is home, but of course it won't truly feel that way until I get sick - for some reason that's the real 'this is home' clincher.

I've been doing a lot of reading lately, and I've read some wonderful books, including Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. He's a Harvard psychology professor, and he's sarcastic and sciencey - what better combo? He talks a lot about how our brains trick us into thinking we're going to be happier than we really are, and how our culture reinforces some of these beliefs. One of things he wrote about that I find incredibly interesting is how memory works. (To neuroscientists I'm sure this is all bio 101 stuff, but it's been about 10 years since I've taken a science class, so forgive me.) The gist of it is this: we all think we stow away our memories kind of like a computer does - somehow our brains can compress all the data into tiny little packages, to be retrieved later when we want to recall something. Instead, we actually just file away some of the key bits from an experience... and then when we're in the midst of memory recall, our brains work hard to fill in the missing pieces from those key bits. This can clearly lead to "remembering" an experience very differently than that very same experience felt when it happened. Or at least different enough to matter. When we use those memories to make predictions about the future, they can quite easily lead us astray. Anyway, the whole book is chock full of fascinating studies and intriguing hypotheses about how humans function - biologically, psychologically, sociologically, and so forth. It's really neat.

The other book I'm reading - and almost finished with - is In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. You know, the NY Times contributor who wrote the seven basic words you need to know about how to eat well: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." It's a quick and fascinating read, not unlike Stumbling on Happiness. And it's very fitting to be reading it while taking a nutrition class. One of the things I really like about Pollan's message is to realize the limitations of reductionism in the field of nutrition. It's easy to forget; I work for some pretty famous Harvard nutritionists, and am constantly immersed in clinical studies on vitamin D, prostate cancer, folic acid, cardiovascular disease, etc. While there certainly is a place for reductionist science, it's pretty crucial to remember that you have to step back and look at the big picture every now and then. Well, even more than that, really. The big picture is almost always - as Pollan reminds us - bigger than the sum of its parts. He sums it up perfectly when he writes that we can nutritionally break down all the components of an egg, but we can't really build one ourselves... and when we try to create something that is equivalent to what nature provides, we usually falter.

Bottom line here: if you're looking for something to read, check out either one of these books. They're both inherently interesting because hey, who doesn't eat or want to be happy?