The Stanson Book Review: Non-Fiction

Well, I’ve basically failed miserably as far as my summer reading goals are concerned, but I’ve decided to do the non-fiction portion of our first annual Stanson Book Review, anyway. These are all books I read this summer, and they’re loosely ordered by how much I’d recommend them. Loosely being a key word there. And now we’ll begin.

1) Warrior Lovers by Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons: A small, but madly interesting book that tries to explain the popularity of “slash fiction” by using a Darwinian approach. For those not familiar with “slash fiction” (which I wasn’t until I read the book), it is a rather popular take off the romance novel, only it involves 2 men, usually famous partners (Starsky and Hutch for example), falling in love. Traditionally all of this is complete with explicit sex scenes. Oh, and it’s written almost exclusively by and for women. I would go into further detail, but, well, that’s what the book’s for. Believe me, it’s very interesting stuff, and the book actually makes slash fiction seem completely normal. The first few chapters also work as a pretty good introduction to Darwinism if you’re unfamiliar with it, and it’s just a very solid book all around.

2) Unrequited Love by Gregory Dart: A rather interesting look into “stalking and being stalked,” I found it refreshing in that it’s a nonfiction book that is not an academic work filled with hundreds of sources (as the other books I list in this category are), but, instead, it’s essentially a collection of Dart’s personal experiences with stalking (he’s been on both ends of the spectrum). The book is most successful with the aforementioned personal recollections, and falters a bit when Dart starts to babble about love’s definition as defined by 18th century philosophers, but, still, it’s a refreshingly easy read for a nonfiction book, and Dart offers a somewhat sympathetic and sensitive look into stalking, and why we do it. Another recommendation to most anyone.

3) Learning & Complex Behavior by John Donahoe & David Palmer: A very informative book about, well, learning and complex behavior, that’s also very technical. This isn’t the sort of book that provides interesting tidbits for you to chat about at dinner, and, unless you’re seriously interested in the learning processes that humans (and other animals) undergo, it’s probably not going to be for you. A lot of this stuff was way over my head too, so, you might want to have a nice background in psychology before tackling it.

4) What to Say When You Talk to Yourself by Chad Helmstetter: I didn’t care much for this one, despite agreeing with a lot of the author’s ideas, simply because he isn’t much of a writer and he doesn’t do much to back up his viewpoints other than anecdotal evidence. There are better books on this subject.

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EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA”>5) The Power of the Eyes by Patricia Webbink: A mildly informative, but spectacularly dull (not to mention dated) book. Webbink lacks any charisma, and this is a very dry read about eyes and how we use them in social situations. I really can’t imagine this interesting any of you, short of those doing a research paper on eye behavior or something.

Ok, I’ll post a similar bit on fiction books within a few weeks, and it’ll likely be noticeably longer, depending on how much I read between now and then. There’ll likely be a few entries in between, but, fear not, the book reviews will come. I’m sure you’re all dying to read it. Well, Heather, at least . . .