Psalms for the End of the World by Cole Haddon

 Why?  Why do I feel compelled to finish books?  The world is full of books, my time on this earth is limited, and there is no reason on earth to spend any of it reading books that I'm not really enjoying.  (Other than my recent obsession with meeting my Goodreads/Storygraph annual reading goals. Four books ahead of schedule as of today!)

Yes, I struggled to finish this one.  Yes, I did finish it.  

Was it a bad book?  Not at all.  The cover quotes reviews saying things like "Mind-bendingly clever and utterly gripping" and "Ingenious" and I can see where those comments come from.  It's well-written too.  

What's my problem? A number of things. The book has to overcome the fact that it leans into a couple of tropes/conventions that are not generally my favourites:

• Multiple characters, multiple timelines, multiple storylines that have no clear connection
• Reader is lost amongst a random, confusing set of situations in a universe where much of what happens makes little sense.  Rules of the world need to be inferred over many pages (Reader only begins to understand the overall situation about 125 pages in.)

Basically, Psalms 'buries the lede'. Which is not all bad.  Not every book needs to be (or should be!) an adventure full of characters saying "As you know Bob, if the graffelgrommit fails we're all DOOOOOOMED!"  

Equally though, does any book need to be stuffed full of graphic descriptions of post-WWII torture murders of Nazis?  Alongside conquistador murders and slavery torments and beatings by racist cops? Especially when all of these gruesome storylines are actually pretty peripheral to the main plot? They're more in the line of illustrations of the fact that we are operating in a universe with  <spoiler>  many parallel and interconnecting simulated worlds </spoiler>.

Why did I finish?  Because the 125 pages point was well-calibrated. (Any later and sorry, I'm not intrigued, I'm frustrated and bored.)  Because the writing was vivid, and the situations were gripping and/or intriguing (especially the ones that didn't feature graphic violence).  Because I wanted to see how everything came together. (Hallelujah. It did! In books like this it doesn't always.) Because the book had an editor (my guess :-) who insisted on the rare chapters that included clear explanations.  Because I could skip the most graphic descriptions of horrible things.

But mostly, because I'm stubborn.  Otherwise I'd have stopped at about page 250 (of 538).  

The Emotional Brain: Lost and found in the science of emotion by Dean Burnett

I wouldn't rate this one more than 3 stars out of 5, if this were Goodreads or Storygraph, mostly because I didn't find it a super-engaging read.  This is ironic because the author structures the entire book around his personal story of trying to understand his own emotions after the death of his father during COVID -- and one of his conclusions is that humans are wired to be more engaged by personal and emotional stories than by 'pure facts'.

I do have a few take-aways though:

• There is no 'scientific' definition of what an emotion is. Emotions are complicated.
• Many brain structures are involved in the creation of emotions, and emotions influence most brain functions
• Cognition (rational thought) is dependent on emotion: how else are we to identify what is important to focus on (of the literally overwhelming number and variety of things we can sense, remember, or identify)?  Without emotion, on what basis would we make decisions? (after all, what is a 'good' or 'bad' outcome without emotion? what would those words even mean?)
• Emotions evolved from our most primitive evaluative functions, deep in our evolutionary past. How do we know?  Emotions are fundamentally linked to our sense of smell i.e./ the part of our brain that evaluates chemical inputs. (The author imagines a single-celled organism in the primordial ooze being attracted to or repelled by chemicals that are useful or dangerous.)
• Sharing emotions, understanding others' emotions, being influenced by others' emotions....these are the basis of human cooperation, human survival, and ultimately, human evolutionary success. 
• Which is why we are more likely to believe information conveyed by someone we have an emotional connection with....and that's why anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists. climate deniers....

So, informative and worth reading, even if I found a few of his conclusions trite (no, I don't think we are attracted to rational thought because we find it emotionally satisfying. I think we are attracted to rationality because it works.)