Review: MADE FOR EACH OTHER by Meg Daley Olmert

Title: Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond
Author: Meg Daley Olmert
Pub info: Da Capo Press, 2009; 312 pp
Genre:  adult nonfiction / biology & animal behavior

The third book in my ambitious 2014 reading project is the first nonfiction book of the year, Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond by Meg Daley Olmert. Just to clarify, this is a book meant for adults, not kids, but I think kids ages 14+ would have no trouble with it.

Goodreads summary:

Nothing turns a baby’s head more quickly than the sight or sound of an animal. This fascination is driven by the ancient chemical forces that first drew humans and animals together. It is also the same biology that transformed wolves into dogs and skittish horses into valiant comrades that would carry us into battle.

Made for Each Other is the first book to explain how this chemistry of attraction and attachment flows through—and between—all mammals to create the profound emotional bonds humans and animals still feel today.

Drawing on recent discoveries from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, behavioral psychology, archeology, as well as her own investigations, Meg Daley Olmert explains why the brain chemistry humans and animals trigger in each other also has a profound effect on our mental and physical well being.

This lively and original investigation asks what happens when the bond is severed. If thousands of years of caring for animals infused us with a biology that shaped our hearts and minds, do we dare turn our back on it? Daley Olmert makes a compelling and scientific case for what our hearts have always known, that we were, and always will be, made for each other.

Status: Finished 2/9/14

My impressions:
 I've had pets all my life: cats, mice, hamsters, turtles, dogs, and birds of various types, including large parrots. I've never thought much about why, but the fact is that I'm irresistibly drawn to all animals, and especially those in the wild. I've always longed to have that magic touch that allows a human to approach a deer in the forest. (Perhaps that's why I'm a sucker for the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs film.) Meg Daley Olmert's book illuminates that urge to bond with the animals.

This may sound shallow, but I really appreciate a scientific book that's broken up into bite-size chunks. Made for Each Other is easy to read partly due to the author's breezy, layperson's style, but also because the sections are short. Right off the bat, this is an easy book to pick up and get into.
 
As to the meat of the book, I enjoyed learning the history and science behind the attraction humans have for animals. Our prehistoric ancestors shared it, as we can see from the meticulous paintings they left behind on cave walls. Eventually they managed to tame some of these wild creatures, and (for the most part) the bond was beneficial on both sides. Olmert discusses the role of oxytocin, a hormone that bonds mother to child and makes humans more cooperative and loving to each other, in a fascinating new way. Her examples are clear and interesting, her research solid, and the findings exciting. 

I got bogged down and found the book dragged a bit in the middle, but I suspect that was more my issue than the author's. I found the domestication of wolves much more interesting than that of cattle, partly because I don't know how helpful it was to the cattle to be domesticated. 

This is a lightweight science read--no cumbersome footnotes (though plenty of end notes), no tightly spaced, lumbering paragraphs full of tech talk. I'm afraid I've become a lazier reader than I once was and don't read as much nonfiction as I'd like. But this book makes reading about science easy. I highly recommend Made for Each Other to all who seek to better understand our fellow species and how we connect to each other.

About Meg Daley Olmert:
Meg Daley Olmert has created and produced documentaries for National Geographic, The Discovery Channel, and PBS. She blogs regularly for Psychology Today, and is currently the director of research and development for Warrior Canine Connection, Inc., a canine therapy program designed to reduce the symptoms of combat PTSD.

Online: Read Meg's interview at Salon.com here, and watch her TEDx Talk on this topic here.


To follow my progress as I bulldoze my way through a stack of 51 to-be-reads this year, search for the tag 2014 TBR Shelf. Read all the reviews here.

  

Passing Time at the Johnson Mill

Hello from Fayetteville! I'm looking forward to visiting with the Vandergriff Elementary Grizzlies tomorrow! And I'm excited to visit a state I've never seen before--Arkansas. Not only is Fayetteville lovely, but its citizens are some of the nicest folks in the U.S.

I can't say enough about the gorgeous place I'm staying at, the Inn at the Mill, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.


This photo of Inn at the Mill is courtesy of TripAdvisor

This beautiful mill, now an inn, was actually restored after the original was destroyed during the Civil War. The historical plaque reads:

Both soldiers and civilians used gristmills to grind wheat and corn into flour and meal. Confederate troops destroyed mills to keep Union armies from using them. Union troops destroyed them to keep C.S. guerrillas from using them as gathering points. This caused much suffering for civilians. Many starved, became refugees, or settled in farm colonies, protected by Union forces. Sutton's Mill, which once stood here, was lost in the war. Former U.S. soldiers Jacob Johnson and William Mayes bought the site in 1865 and built the mill that stands here today.

The rooms are fantastic, and the staff serves up wonderful food as well. Thanks go to Marci Tate, Vandergriff's librarian, for finding me this little piece of history to enjoy.

More tomorrow on my visit to Vandergriff!

The Saga of Colin & Mike

Here I sit in the coffee shop of my local junior college, as I do most Friday mornings. I feel hip, like a college student. I listen to the jazz on the loudspeakers; I sit opposite an abstract painting entitled Impending Doom. I am a regular now.

Last semester I had occasion to spend a few hours here most weekdays, for reasons I won't go into now, and I got to know the other regulars. Oh, not know as in, "Hi, Jack, how's it going? Ace that chemistry test?" Just know them as in, There's that deliriously happy couple who always hold hands over their steaming lattes. There's the heavyset guy who holds one-on-one Bible readings. That kind of thing.

Three seats away from me is the Talker. I discovered him one day last semester when he came in with two or three other people and proceeded to hold a very loud monologue on all sorts of subjects, most of them related to pop culture. He was at one end of the coffee shop; I moved to the other end, and I could still hear him, loud and clear. I'd forgotten to bring my earbuds, so I couldn't drown him out with music or white noise, and there weren't any other seats to be had in the student center. I was trapped with him and quickly developed a raging headache.

Today, the Talker is alone--but not entirely silent. He's working on some kind of math problems. I know this because he just now boomed out: "Bingo! I knew I was on the right track! So that's blah blah to the blah blah power ... yes! Wait ... Oh no! Oh, yeah ... duh."

Over in his customary corner sits Colin*, a slightly built young fellow who wears a stocking cap. I can't help feeling a bit lonely for him. Last semester he hung out every day with Mike, who wore heavy black-rimmed square glasses and a cool black Fedora. Every day they sat together for a couple of hours and chatted about their lives. Tired of living at home, they were planning on getting an apartment together; Mike wondered how to approach a girl he liked; Colin talked about how he wanted to have a daughter someday. (I found this endearing; how many young college men are even thinking about such a thing, let alone talking to their buddies about it?)

But this semester, Mike has disappeared. I haven't seen him once. Colin sits at the same table in his stocking cap, his head slumped onto his hand, listlessly staring at his laptop screen. Does he miss Mike? Did the apartment thing fall through? What happened to the car Colin was going to buy? The story has been cut off midplot, and I'm left to finish it. Did they have a fight? Did one of them confess to a gay crush and the other snubbed him? Did Mike drop out to play sax in a smoky nightclub?

I know that probably Colin is listless because we're all listless and tired of this endless winter of snow and cold and wind. Mike's spring semester schedule probably doesn't allow him time to hang out in the coffee shop (and when does Colin go to class, I'd like to know?). But my writer's mind spins out alternate scenarios. Maybe Mike's endless chatter and hipster attitude broke Colin at last. Maybe Colin has actually murdered Mike and hidden him in their new walk-in closet! Does he regret it now? Well, shouldn't he?

The Talker has finished his work with a triumphant bellow: "I hate math! Math is evil! At least it's done." Colin has given up and closed up the laptop for the day. The cute couple have gone to lunch. So now it's just me.

And the writing.


*I've heard these guys use their real names, but these are fake names. Just in case they're reading. As if.


image by Rüdiger Wölk (photo taken by Rüdiger Wölk) [CC-BY-SA-2.0-de], via Wikimedia Commons.

TBR 2014: Book No 3

There's no question that fiction far outweighs nonfiction on my TBR shelf. My nonfiction titles usually center on linguistics, travel, biography, and science--especially animals and physics (which I'm rubbish at, but I keep trying anyway). I'm very excited to finally read Meg Daley Olmert's Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond (Da Capo, 2009), which has been sitting on my TBR shelf for at least a couple of years now.  I don't know why it's taken me so long to get around to a book that examines the connection between us and the other animals. Sounds fascinating!

In one of those delectably synergistic books that tie together threads of science, history, and everyday life, Olmert explains the evolutionary processes behind what E. O. Wilson calls biophilia, our love and need for animals.... More proof of the astonishing intricacy of life’s interconnectivity.
--Booklist

Who's with me? Besides Sawyer the dog (pictured above), I mean.


That's right: I've committed to reading all the books on my TBR Shelf this year--and blogging them! Click here to read the reviews I've posted so far.

Introducing LANDRY PARK

 Landry Park by Bethany Hagen
Dial, 2014
YA dystopia/sci-fi
374 pp














For those of you who don't know, I'm a member of a group called The Lucky 13s. We're authors who were lucky enough to have our debut kidlit novels published in 2013. It's a fantastic community of writers who share wisdom, tears, and occasionally taxicabs and barstools.

Only one other Lucky 13 lives in my hometown--Bethany Hagen, author of the brand-new YA sci-fi novel Landry Park. Bethany's pub date was nudged along in 2013 until finally it fell over into 2014. (Yeah, it happens. Quite a bit, in fact.) But she's still a Lucky 13 in my eyes, and last night I attended her fabulous launch party at the Johnson County Central Resource Library.

There Bethany answered a host of questions posed to her by one of the library staff, including a personality quiz (Which Disney Character Are You Most Like?) that revealed Bethany's main character to be most similar to Belle from Disney's Beauty & the Beast. We also learned that Bethany loves the Myers-Briggs Personality Test and that with her dreamy, intuitive nature, she's lucky to be married to someone who remembers to feed the children.

About the Book
Bethany says she was inspired to write Landry Park while working at the Johnson County Museum, where she saw exhibits from the Edwardian era juxtaposed with those from the nuclear age. Her vision of a future with the technology of the nuclear age meshed with the strictures of Downton Abbey society makes for a fascinating tale of romance and rebellion.

The Goodreads summary:

In a fragmented future United States ruled by the lavish gentry, seventeen-year-old Madeline Landry dreams of going to the university. Unfortunately, gentry decorum and her domineering father won't allow that. Madeline must marry, like a good Landry woman, and run the family estate. But her world is turned upside down when she discovers the devastating consequences her lifestyle is having on those less fortunate. As Madeline begins to question everything she has ever learned, she finds herself increasingly drawn to handsome, beguiling David Dana. Soon, rumors of war and rebellion start to spread, and Madeline finds herself and David at the center of it all. Ultimately, she must make a choice between duty--her family and the estate she loves dearly--and desire.

"An exciting YA debut with an intricately built dystopian world inhabited by a set of highly opposed characters which are complex and well-drawn."      --Challenging Reads blog

You can get your very own copy of Landry Park at chain and indie bookshops everywhere as well as these online outlets:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Connect with Bethany online at her website and on Twitter.

CLAIRE, the CLAIRE Blog

Just a mini-rant. I promise.*

Let me state up front that I like LEGOs. I'm in favor of LEGOs. When my daughter was three years old, an astute grandma gave her a big set of LEGO blocks. They didn't have a theme or a movie tie-in; they were just random blocks with a couple of random LEGO people thrown in. They also came in a cool box with a sliding lid that doubled as a LEGO platform, with the little raised circles that LEGOs can bond to.

Genius. My kid played with that toy from age three till about age 13. No joke. Because there was no theme, no model to build, she used her imagination to create whatever she wanted. At age three, she made kitties (kind of weird-looking ones, to be honest). At 13, she was making whole scenes of stories from inside her head.

Later, we did get a couple of the Harry Potter-themed LEGO sets because she was wild about Harry and LEGOs, too. Those didn't have the long-term play value of the original set, but that was okay. I still approve of the idea.

What I don't get is how LEGO Harry Potter figures came to star in their own games. We have the original HP computer games. They're fun. The characters in the games look like Harry and Ron and Hermione. You can be Harry and learn spells and follow the stories. The wizards have more than two expressions on their faces. Fun.

And with the building sets, you can play with LEGO Harry and make your own scenes and stories. Fun.

But how does LEGO Harry branch off into his own animated world? And why does anyone care? I don't want to play a game in which Harry is reduced to a plastic block. And here's why this all came up: I don't get the LEGO movie, better known as The LEGO Movie. (Really? That's the title? Why yes, yes it is.) I love cool animation, whether traditional or computerized; I don't mind hearing Morgan Freeman's voice emerge from an animated figure. But an animated figure that's a representation of a toy figure ... I guess that's too far for my feeble brain to go. It's a layer of metareality I don't really understand, and frankly, I don't like it, either. We already dictate to kids how to play with their toys by making them more and more representational, and thus restrictive. A refrigerator box can be a rocket ship, a race car, a TARDIS, a clubhouse. But a race car is a race car. A LEGO Harry Potter is a LEGO Harry Potter. You can call him something else, but in your heart, you know what he is.

That said, I longed for representational toys when I was a kid. I wanted the "real" playhouse. My TV-fed brain would have eagerly lapped up toy versions of my favorite movie characters. But my imagination was better fed by the generic. And I'm glad now that it was.


And don't even get me started on the novelization of the film of the toys that don't represent anything real. And yeah, it's on the New York Times Best Seller List.

*SIGH*

*Yeah, I know. Promise broken. Sorry.

The Potter Blasphemy

Okay, so I know a lot of people were furious, teary-faced, and gnashing their teeth over J.K. Rowling's little reveal about the love life of Harry Potter last week. In case you've been living under a rock, or you've been lately hit with an Obliviate charm, here's what she said:

I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron. [...] In some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit and I'll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent! I hadn't told [screenwriter Steve] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point.

It's amazing to me that seven years after the end of the series, this announcement made headline news all over the place, reported not only by Entertainment Weekly but CNN and The Sunday Times. And the shippers rose up, as Rowling feared, in "rage and fury."

But as much as I hate to say it, I can see her point.

The thing is, I love Ron. He may have always been the second banana, but he's a crucial character. Harry was the hero, Hermione was the brain, and Ron was along for the ride--except that without him, both of the other two take themselves a wee bit too seriously. So of course I wanted Ron to end up with the girl of his dreams. And let's face it, he chose a girl somewhat like his mother--a bossy know-it-all. There's little doubt who runs the Ron Weasley household.

But it always nagged at me: Why does Hermione choose him? I don't know if she'd be better off with Harry, necessarily, but apart from the fact that Ron makes her laugh, what does he bring to the relationship? He's a good chum and all, but it seems more plausible that Hermione would find someone a bit more bookish to be her husband. And she and Ron fought so much. He was always going to feel inferior to her, and she was always going to let him think that was true.

It's a relationship forged in fire. What happens when that fire goes out, just as they enter adulthood? How would that affect the life they build together from that point forward, as they settle into the humdrum world of kids and laundry and bill paying? (Lord. You can see why no one wants to read about that.) And who the heck does Hermione talk to about all the great stuff she reads? Not Ron. And not Harry, either. Let's hope she has a book club or something.



To soften the blow a bit, Rowling adds:

They'll probably be fine [with some counseling]. He needs to work on his self-esteem issues and she needs to work on being a little less critical.

And yet, and yet. Maybe their shared experiences helped them grow out of these archetypes a little--the brainiac and the clown. I wonder if Hermione wouldn't have softened quite a bit already. We do see a lot of the necessary transformation happen in the series itself. Hermione is still bookish--she's the researcher, much like Willow Rosenberg on Buffy the Vampire Slayer--and Ron is still the funny second banana. But Hermione has seen the value of other traits, and Ron has seized his own destiny and made his own heroic choices. They've come through this experience quite different people from when they began.

So, like JKR, I love Ron and Hermione together, perhaps mostly out of sentiment. But I think there's a case to be made that they could stay together. What about you? Should Ron and Hermione have walked off into the sunset? Should Harry and Hermione? What about Ginny? (That's another blog post altogether. I was never wild about the Harry-Ginny pairing.) Tell me your thoughts, blogfrogs!