reading notes

Hiromi Goto
ISBN: 1551521571

There are eleven mostly odd stories in this collection. I mean that in a good way. Reading so many stories with unapologetically Canadian (folks wear toques, not winter hats) and Japanese characters, I realized how “scrubbed” many short stories are — too many happen in generic places with generic people. The foreignness of the characters (to me) isn’t what makes the stories odd, though. Characters like the woman who finds out she was born with a tail is what makes for the wonderful oddness.

The formerly breastfeeding woman, the “Stinky Girl” and undead frozen goldfish also contribute to the sense of not-quite-right but quite real in Goto’s stories. The disconnect between the world her characters (and her readers) are expecting and the one that is provides rich surprises. Recommended for fans of the offbeat short story, and folks who like their magic realism with subtle twists.

by Anosh Irani
ISBN: 1551928035

Irani knows how to set up a story:

There will be magic, poverty, thievery, music, pollution, dancing, murder, and lust and very little prayer.

His novel, set in a bizarre and fantastic Bombay, does have all of these things. It also has lepers, a limb market, beauty, and acts of horrific cruelty. The main character — a “cripple” missing his arm — manages to be both charming and offensive.

If you enjoy magic realism, I recommend tracking down this book. (I picked it up in Vancouver, not sure if it is readily available in the US.)

by Thomas King
ISBN: 0006485251

King doesn’t tell one good story in this book — he tells ten of them. Each story is different, yet they all share a certain quality that I can’t quite name, but I want to describe as “heard.” Reading the book (silently) to myself, I felt like I was being told a story because I could hear it.

King plays with myth, interrogates identity, pokes at history and nationalism, and even throws in a bit of science fiction. He’s also got kids and parents who don’t really know how to talk to each other, a well-intentioned man who struggles to live up to his promises, and another who isn’t very likeable because he talks too loudly and tells the truth.

He even has the requisite anthropologist coming to listen to the native tell a story — actually, he has that happen in the first story. It is an unsettling in a good way choice, and that is really the quality I was hoping to find in this book. My expectations for King’s narratives were set by having read his reach into your body cavity and yank on internal organs moving nonfiction work The Truth About Stories, and though this collection didn’t live up to that mark for me, I still recommend it, because you can hear the stories so clearly in your head, and they are worth knowing.

Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
by Donald Norman
ISBN: 0465051367

Thanks to Norman’s book, it is possible to settle the Mac vs Windows issue once and for all: Macs really do work better.

Now, Norman doesn’t actually say Macs are better, but his first chapter is called “Attractive Things Work Better” so there you go. In a nutshell, people think more creatively when they are relaxed and happy, and aesthetically pleasing product design can evoke this reaction. Norman isn’t just relying on his opinion here, but cites the research of psychologist Alice Isen.

This leads into the most valuable (well, second most, after providing a great “Macs are better” explanation) part of the book, a discussion of the three levels of design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. (Our immediate reactions are on the visceral level, behavioral reactions are based on use and are all about function, and reflective design works when our minds are engaged.) This chapter considers the problem of balancing the importance of the three different levels, and ends with a bit of advice:

If you want a successful product, test and revise. If you want a great product, one that can change the world, let it be driven by someone with a clear vision.

Norman gets pretty weird by the end of the book, though. How weird? Consider this: “How will my toaster ever get better, making toast the way I prefer, unless it has some pride?” In his defense, I suppose he was trying to be funny. It falls a bit flat, though, and his thinking about the future of robotics seems more obsessive than speculative by the end of the chapter. The purpose for it only became clear to me when I read the acknowledgements and learned Norman is on the board of a company called Evolution Robotics.

Norman is a pioneering thinker in the psychology of design, and this book is important because it advocates for emotional involvement with design. But it doesn’t hang together well as a whole, and the content probably should have been published as separate essays. Definitely worth checking out of the library, and worth reading if you are even tangentially involved in design or product development.