Category Archives: Book Review

A nerdy girl’s happy accident.

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Kind of a crazy night last night. Definitely not what I expected. Fortunately for a “nerdy girl” like me, expectations aren’t always meant to be met.

We’ve gotten our fair share of snow here in central Wisconsin over the last couple of weeks and my husband and I had a shoveling date (su-per romantic) planned for after work. In retrospect, I should have eaten a snack before hand. But I didn’t. So an hour and a half and goodness knows how many shovel-fulls of snow later, I was much more hungry than I generally like to be. (Seriously, I do not handle hunger well– it makes me panicky. You’d think I’d have experienced food insecurity or something in my life the way I behave. But nope. Just food neuroses.) I was also sweaty and had cra-a-a-zy hair from sweating while wearing a hat and being constantly bombarded with snow blower snow dust. To complete the look: yoga pants tucked into snow boots. I believe this is what the kids call a “hot mess.”

I dragged my starving butt back to the truck and the husb (because “hubs” really doesn’t make sense to me– that’s not the order the letters go in!) and I decided we’d get Culvers (mmmm… butter burger…) and soon! But two quick errands first!

We went to Fleet Farm first. I was starving, so it was unpleasant. But my ridiculous looking self fit right in. In fact, there’s probably no better place in all of Marshfield to show off the kind of look I was rocking right then, to be honest. It was a quick trip, in and out, and back to the car and one more stop to go!

But that’s where my expectations went awry.

I had never actually been to a book signing, I’d only seen them on tv, really, and I expected the author to be sitting at a table, surrounded by stacks of her books and a personal assistant or security guard or something. I expected to walk in, wait in a line, have my book signed, and go.

What I forgot was that I live in Marshfield, Wisconsin, population 19,000-ish, yoga pants tucked into snow boots pretty much a-o-k November through February. (Fine, March. Whatever.) And the author was too. So this was not a made-for-tv book signing.

It was actually quite a bit better than that!

The Marshfield Public Library was hosting author Lisa Boero, who wrote the book Murderers and Nerdy Girls Work Late. (Oh, and also FIVE more in the series! Woot!) It was the first book we read as a book club and it was awesome. And different. So different.

Nerdy Girls
{Available on Amazon!}

You see, Liz Howe, Nerdy Girl heroine, has prosopagnosia, or face blindness. She cannot recognize faces. Interestingly, Lisa Boero, Nerdy Girl author, also has face blindness. So she’s actually writing her super clever fiction from a place of personal experience– and that made for a really interesting talk last night! (Because that’s what it was, a reading, a talk, a Q&A, PLUS a book signing… there’s my happy accident!) It was fascinating to hear not only what Lisa had to say about her condition and her fictional character with her real condition, but also to hear all of the questions people asked her. Most interesting of all, and very Under-the-Tapestry-relevant was her reason for writing about it.

Lisa knew she had a really hard time recognizing people– she thought she was stupid. Although she acquired prosopagnosia sometime around the age of 12 (coinciding with removal of a brain tumor), Lisa had no idea that her issues were even a legitimate medical concern until she started dating her husband, who happens to be a neurologist, in her 20s. She never even thought to ask. Instead, the number one driver in her life was the desire to be “normal” at any cost.

But now Lisa Boero has a 10-year-old daughter and what she wants for her is to know that when you experience a hardship, you can use it as a springboard for growth. (Her example: another rejection letter about her book? at least it’s not a brain tumor!) And that no matter what, you should never hide who you are. But how could she ask that of her daughter if she couldn’t do that for herself? So she did do it for herself. She came out about her condition to her friends and family (her husband knew, of course, but her kids had no idea) and “nerdy girl” Liz was born.

And Liz is fascinating. Lisa is too.

Sound familiar?

Probably not, because what Lisa Boero went through was pretty extreme. But I just kept thinking that it was such a good lesson. An extreme example of something crazy common. That middle school desire to be normal, no matter what. To fit in in any way that you can and hide your true self away if you can’t. Lisa seems to recognize now that having prosopagnosia is something that makes her extraordinarily unique… and exceptionally interesting to a lot of people, not just neurologists. Myself included.

As I sat in the next to last row with my crazy hair and dripping snow boots, I was absolutely mesmerized. I loved listening to Lisa talk and despite my ridiculously loud stomach screaming “Feed me, Seymour!” every 30 seconds or so, the hour and a half long “book signing” just flew by. Not only that, but I took the opportunity to get signed up for the Marshfield Public Library Adult Winter Reading Program and earned NINE entries into the prize drawings for registering and attending the book signing. Double bonus, much? This is way better than BookIt! (Unless what I end up winning is a pizza gift certificate… then it’s exactly like BookIt…)

A little while ago, my friend Adriane who co-shares (not a real thing) my Kindle account (shhhhh) forced me to read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks… it’s essentially a series of case reports about people with strange neurological disorders. While I technically read it, I didn’t really internalize it, probably because I couldn’t really imagine the people described in the real world. But now I can. And I’m fascinated. I think I’m going to give that man and his wife/hat another shot… there may be more nerdy girls in there and I need to re-visit that possibility!

A missed opportunity, a happy ending, and a 1001 BOOK CHALLENGE!

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I’ve mentioned a few times my failed attempts at friendship in the recent past. Kite flying in San Francisco, anyone? It was awkward… and kind of pathetic… but I don’t regret it. Because that was not a missed opportunity for friendship. Granted, it didn’t develop into a friendship either. At least I know! Because missed opportunities for friendship? SO MUCH WORSE!

Lots of wind-- perfect kite weather!
Lots of wind– perfect kite weather!

I earned my undergraduate degree from Michigan Tech way up in the UP. I was a chemistry major and really liked my program, except there were very few women (although that applied to most programs up at Tech) and I often often felt like something of an outcast. It’s not that I didn’t like the people I had classes with, I just didn’t really know how to be friends with them and I spent a lot of time nursing hurt feelings over sexist comments and awful nicknames. (Belgian Vixen– really?! what does that even mean?!) But there was one girl I had a lot of classes with named Nicole. She was COOL, you guys. Like real cool. Everyone talked to her, people didn’t make fun of her, she wore cool shoes and her clothes were all “I’m walking around being confident and cute in something you couldn’t even have dreamed of putting together” and she even had super great curly hair (and this was waaaay before I had tamed mine). I wanted to be her friend. Like for real.

At this point you’re probably feeling super bad for me. But don’t! It’s not like I didn’t have any friends. I met some seeeriously awesome people in the dorms my first year and made a lot more friends working in the Writing Center and  elsewhere around campus. So it’s not like I had the urge to stalk or kidnap Nicole or anything. Really. I wasn’t that desperate. I just thought she was real cool and would have loved to have been friends with her, especially since we were both in chemistry.

But I never said anything. I never even tried. To this day, I can remember where she sat in Inorganic Chemistry (oy, that class… what kind of chemistry professor covers up the periodic table during exams?!)– a few rows to the left of me. Opportunities day after day after day as we filed in and out of the classroom, as we did dangerous (horrifically dangerous, truly) things in the lab, and as we commiserated over the ridiculousness that was that class in the chem computer lab upstairs. (Seriously, I hated inorganic so much– more than p-chem, analytical, instrumental analysis and FORTRAN (yes, I had to learn FORTRAN90, I know, pointless) combined). Enough about Inorganic Chemistry! Get out of my brain!!

Back to Nicole. This story actually has a super great ending. No. A super great re-beginning! So keep reading!

You see, thanks to the miracle that is the modern internet and to Mark Zuckerberg, inventor (maybe– have you seen The Social Network? It’s good!) of Facebook, Nicole and I have remained in touch. As in, sometimez she posts cool stuff on FB and I’ll “like” it if I’m feeling brave. But then! THEN! I got really brave, and I wrote this blog, and Nicole got really brave (turns out we’re so nervously and cowardly alike that we would have totally hit it off in college had anyone had the courage to actually do something!) and commented on something I posted and we talked… and talked some more… and dang! What a chance to make up for a missed opportunity! And get pumped, because something really, really cool is coming out of it!!

Have you ever heard of the list of 1,001 books you need to read before you die? I hadn’t either… Nicole brought it to my attention. Just like she brought a reading challenge to my attention in the first place. Because we like to read, Nicole of Brash Biochemist, Dawn of Cups Running Over (another missed-opportunity-followed-by-internet-reunion-friend), are linking up to bring you the NEVER ENDING BOOK CHALLENGE– a challenge to read (or at least try to read, it’s ok to not finish a book if you’re really not digging it and if it’s something you’ve given yourself permission to do) all of the 1,001 books on that list!

Want to play?

Great! Here’s the deal:

I used the list available here to generate a list of all 1,001 books in a Google docs spreadsheet. (It’s public– feel free to check it out here.) Every time we’re ready for a new book, the three of us will take turns picking… either randomly or not (picker’s choice) and we’ll all read the book du jour.

I went first. I used a random number generator to choose a number from 1 to 1,001 (because I really don’t trust myself to be unbiased) and got the number 814. Number 814 corresponds to Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae (available free on the Kindle!!). So here we go!

As we read, Nicole, Dawn, and I will post about the books and our experiences and we’ll also add our names and the date the book was completed to the spreadsheet. If you’re reading along, please feel free to do the same! We’d love to see lots of names and dates… all of us reading together!

I suppose the moral of the story is this: Learn from me, nerds! It’s so worth speaking up! The response isn’t always ideal (see kite example above), but it’s better than missing an opportunity altogether! Granted, there’s always the internet and over a thousand books to make up for it…

Let’s read!!!

Quiet: A Long-Winded Book Review From a Girl Who Can’t Stop Talking (On the Internet)

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On my way out of the office this afternoon I walked out the door just as a coworker from another department walked past.  We said hello, she asked me a question, and I panicked.  Panicked!  Because it’s a long walk to the parking lot and the thought of small talk all the way after a day full of interpersonal interaction was just too much.  Much too much.  So I did what any slightly neurotic yet professional adult person would do… I ducked into the bathroom.  I didn’t go, but I stood in there for a couple minutes, putting my hat and mittens on, and then left.  I walked all the way to may car in sweet, sweet solitude.  That was close!

So what exactly is my deal?  I think I might know…

For a nerdy girl like me, school (of the elementary, middle, and high school variety and beyond) was tough for many reasons, but none were quite as painful to me as group work.  It was always my least favorite thing– I hated having to depend on others, to not be in control, and most of all, interacting.  Do you know how hard it is for someone like me to constantly try to say words to other people without being awkward?  It’s hard!  Real hard.

Turns out, it’s not actually all that uncommon to feel that way.  A revelation!  And that one piece of information made reading Susan Cain’s book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” completely worth my while… but there was so much more!

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I have to admit, I wasn’t in love with the writing style– too many direct quotations for my taste, but the information was good.  Really good.  And the way it was organized made a ton of sense.  (Ok, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe the problem wasn’t really the use of text from other sources, but rather the length of the passages that were quoted and the quoted text within the quotation and such… sometimes it was hard for me to follow.  Perhaps an issue with reading it on the Kindle?  Either way, it was a relatively minor thing.)

Cain begins by explaining how extroversion became the ideal in the US, describes the biology behind the personality type, and then discusses how to deal with introversion in the real world, in a culture where it’s not necessarily valued.

As a science-minded individual, I really loved the explanation of the biology.  Cain discusses really interesting research on “high reactive” individuals and explains that introversion can be predicted even in infancy by observing reactions to external stimuli. Introverts tend to react more strongly and than extroverts… translate that to adulthood and new people, new places, new situations leave an introvert in need of some major recharge time.

And it turns out:

THAT’S OK.

I hate small talk– I’m terrible at it.  But becoming overly familiar and engaged in deep conversation from the get go?  That’s something I’m good at.  Apparently, that’s an introvert thing.  I enjoy social things once I’m there and fully engaged, but dang do I ever freak out in advance… and I really need to take time to wind down after the fact.  Apparently, that’s an introvert thing too.  And it’s all ok.

The only part of the book I really didn’t like was the amount of detail related to parenting and teaching introverted children.  It’s possible that it annoyed me only because I’m well past the point of it being helpful for my own life (watch me end up with devastatingly shy children now that I said that– karma), but I almost felt like it could have been a completely separate book– “Nerds: How to Parent or Teach a Child that Seems Really Weird.”  Just think on it, Ms. Cain.  We can discuss if you’d like.

One of the things I found particularly interesting was the discussion of pseudo-extroversion and the ability of introverts to build community over the internet.  No wonder I’m in love with Facebook (sorry, I know it’s not cool to admit that, but what a great way to keep up without direct interaction– dream come true!) and I’ve been surprisingly open to spilling my guts here…  It turns out, a lot of introverted people interact better when they can do it virtually.

Finally, if you read the book carefully, you’ll note Cain’s subtle promotion of Under the Tapestry… on page 263 (emphasis mine):

“We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings.  And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing (‘I was never the same again after my wife left me’), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise (‘The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I’m so much happier with my new wife’).”

So, Susan, friend, you say that introverts tend to be pretty good at the blessings in disguise thing?  Finding the silver lining?  Remembering that we can only see the underside of the tapestry from our vantage point?  I’d say that’s an advantage to being an introvert– an introvantage, if you will.  Cool.

Anyway, if you’re an introvert, you’re going to love this book– because it is thoroughly validating and if you’re like me, you love it when people grab you by the shoulders, look you directly in the eye, and scream “YOU ARE NORMAL (at least in this respect)”… of course, I prefer all of that in a metaphorical way because too much touching makes me cringe, direct eye contact is uncomfortable for me, and when people scream at me it hurts my feelings even if the words being screamed are positive.  (Ugh, introverts, right?)  Even if you’re not an introvert, reading this book may give you a little more insight into people who seem obnoxiously shy, or even stuck-up, aloof, or distant… perhaps they’re just introverted.  (Or stuck-up.  You never can tell.)