The Golem and the Jinni provides the rare treat of historical fiction infused with fantastic elements whilst mixing multiple cultures. The characters are compelling, multiple related story lines are deftly woven together and the story itself provides a beautiful tableau on which to paint these characters. The turn-of-the-(previous)-century, immigrant New York that Helene Wecker paints is a full character in itself.
Courtesy of Harper Books
Ms. Wecker doesn’t simply invite us to know her characters, she has fully immerses us in their world, their lives, and in their thoughts. As we read the book, the rhythm of our own thoughts and the vocabulary of our own reflections begin to take on a hint of flavor from those of the characters. These characters are so rich in their responses and their thought life as well as the way they see the challenges ahead of them that, while there is a lovely driving narrative throughout the whole story, you can simply enjoy diving into the well of these lives.
Helene Wecker – Photo Credit Sheldon Wecker
Let’s take a little deeper look at the culture picture given of early Easter European Jewish and Syrian Christian immigrants to America. There is much in their cultures that overlap – the near-eastern tradition of honoring and taking care of strangers in need as well as some of their cuisine. In New York, each had a tight community to deal with the transition to this new world in which they found themselves. Standing on the streets of each neighborhood would have brought similar impressions – busy, smells of coffee and spices, street vendors and calls of friendship. There were, of course, differences and sometimes hostility. Ms. Wecker allows you to vicariously experience this world while weaving in fantastical elements with the story between the Golem and the Jinni. The warp and woof of the cultures brings out the features of the various characters, how they perceive others and respond. It’s not like their cultural automaton but culture flavors all that they do; Ms. Wecker brings this all about in an organic and realist manner. It provides a framework for the character’s relations and the direction of the narrative.
Jinn, Bedouin, caring Rabbi, crafty and cruel magician trained as a rabbi, coffee shop owners, a scion of the Winston family who wanted to be more than a jewel on some man’s arm and so much more. Indeed, both Chava, the poor Golem and Sophia, the Heiress, live under the burden of limiting expectation. Both are expected to be obedient wives who exist solely to please their husbands. Clearly, they walk in different worlds (that eventually collide), but their primary issues are similar There are multiple story threads that smoothly come together. Each person, each thread, every story told and each bit of action are all masterfully used to build the narrative and drive the story toward the conclusion. There are no wasted bits and yet it doesn’t fill artificially contrived.
In this debut novel, Ms. Wecker already exhibit a mastery of her craft. The dialog, story, characters and worlds (whether New York, the desert, Poland or an oasis) are perfectly married, her phrasing carefully reflects each setting and person and she understands and conveys the challenges and longings that come to us all.
George Guidall – Photo Credit Joanna Perrin
I heard the book, performed by audiobook veteran George Guidall, as much of the story as I read. His pacing, inflection and characterization are spot-on. In particular, his pacing allows you to fully soak up the world, the characters and storyline. If you enjoy audiobooks at all, you love this one. If you want to luxuriate in the wording, you can always user Whispersync for Voice to jump between the Audible version and the Kindle.
HarperBooks Trailer
I highly recommend this story of love and loss, moving beyond people’s expectations laid down for you and rising about your cultural limitations even as you embrace it.
I’ve used TechSmith’s SnagIt for well over a decade. I’ve used it at work to create training documents, user manuals, document issues and overall communication about software systems I use, support or help develop. In the evenings, I’ve also used it from my work laptop/tablet to edit photos, capture screenshots to communicate with others how to do things or to document support issues when things go awry. I think are a lot of folks think about SnagIt simply as a screen-capture tool and, hey, doesn’t the Snipping tool included with Windows do that for you? For some, the Snipping tool may be all they need, but SnagIt’s ability to capture scrolling areas within a page, add annotation, make it dead easy to share and countless other activities all leave the Snipping tool and other capture tools (free and otherwise) in the dust (about which more later)
All images courtesy of Techsmith.com
While its screen capture ability is the gold standard, I use its editing tool at least as much; I use it for photos as well as screen captures. Now, it’s not going to have filters, change of white balance or other pure photo editing features, however, I tend to use those aspects sparingly. I typically use the original image but will crop/paste, annotate or resize for web use. One of the primary uses I’ve had over the last couple of year is to manage images for this blog. There are times I’m just using my home computer and I always run into a challenge – there is no other tool in its price range (roughly $50) that I can find that allows me to edit an image for a particular pixel dimension without degradation of the image. Many online platforms have defined recommended pixel height and width (they’ll accept others but the aspect ratio or quality will be degraded). For example, the particular WordPress template I use has the banner set to 960 x 260. Not too many images have that as their native dimension. I typically mashup images such as an author picture with book cover elements to create a banner (with their permission, of course). SnagIt’s editor is a huge help in this. I can crop, resize and paste in images with clear feedback on the pixel size throughout the editing process. The editor has some of the best annotation tools as well as ability to obscure sensitive information with highly configurable blurring. Simply put, SnagIt is my business and personal workhorse for image editing. Yes, I’ll turn to other tools to create a collage, to apply rarely used filters and to fix an image’s white balance, but nothing is as easy, intuitive and functional as SnagIt for my purposes. This is key for an impatient, non-artistically inclined guy such as myself. It returns its value on its editor alone.
The editor, however, is certainly not the only story; indeed, it’s not the main event. SnagIt’s ability to capture exactly what you want on screen is dead-on simple and accurate. If you word within web applications or just grabbing information from a web site, SnagIt can accurately capture the most obscure elements whether that is a drop-down box with values listed, a window within a window or an area on the screen that scrolls or where you select an area like a slide show. It can capture all of it. You can also create presets to manage the way you capture for your use. For example, the default capture mode will present the captured screen in a box that allows you to quickly set the pixel dimensions and whether you’re capturing a still image or a video (see below). The vast majority of my captures keep whatever pixel size I originally selected and it’s a still image. So, for my use, that dialog is redundant. Presets to the rescue! I created a preset that bypasses the dialog and brings it right into the editor. By the way, this is a tribute to Techsmith’s excellent customer service. I actually fussed about the intermediary dialog when it first came on the scene in release 12 and didn’t like that there wasn’t a setting to ignore it in this post. The folks at TechSmith came right back with the suggested preset. I felt partly idiotic for not thinking of it myself but mostly grateful for their detailed suggestion.
The magic of the latest release, along with improved user experience through changes in the user interface, is its enhanced ability to capture any region and especially a part of an application or web page that scrolls they’ve dubbed panoramic capture. Here’s a little video example of how it works:
This latest ability has finally pushed me over the edge. As cheap as I am (for example, I still have a 1995 Ford Taurus station wagon for the use of my children), I finally broke down and bought my own copy for personal use. I’m not sure I have a better evidence for how well the tool works for me than that.
There are some tools that, over the years, that simply nail their niches such as Scooter Software’s Beyond Compare, Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IDM Software’s UltraEdit; Techsmith’s SnagIt (as well as their Camtasia video creation/editing tool, but that’s another post) belong in that pantheon that own their category of software tools. If you need to do anything beyond the most rudimentary of screen captures or image edits, I highly recommend SnagIt, you’ll be glad you grabbed it.
I’ve had my Microsoft Band 2 for roughly 3 months. I use it within Microsoft’s ecosystem (yeah, I drank the Kool-Aid). I have Windows 10 on my PC and Surface as well as Windows 10 mobile on my Lumia 950 phone. (All that I indicate in this post will also hold for those using the Band with iOS (Apple) or Android except the Cortana integration isn’t as good). During this time, I went from walking as my main form of exercise to walking, running and various strength and toning exercises. I also lost about 25 pounds. What role did the Band have in helping to improve my fitness so far? It’s been instrumental in providing data and helping to analyze that data. (Here‘s some notes on my experience with Microsoft’s fabulous support of the Band)
Courtesy of thedigitallifestyle.com
To understand this picture, we’ll need to go back a little bit. I have a yearly health assessment that dives into a lot of health indicators including blood pressure, BMI, and various blood tests to look at cholesterol etc. Last year, I started walking on a regular basis but made no other changes to my behavior related to health. I used a step-counter. Most of that time it was a Fitlinxx Pebble+ and shared my progress with others on http://meyouhealth.com/. This was helpful to see my progress, give me some daily goals and to have some shared encouragement from others using the site. As the year progressed, I switched over to a Fitbit Flex that my daughter was no longer using. I ate pretty much whatever I wanted and my sleep was less than optimal. As a result of that year walking, all my health indicators at my yearly assessment improved slightly. So, I began to wonder, what it would look like if I took a more active role with my diet and sleep? In particular, what would be the impact if I knocked out the junk and reduced portions in eating while making more of an effort to get a reasonable amount of sleep? So, my plan was simply to change my eating and sleep a bit.
Courtesy of Microsoftstore.com
On my additional quest to eat better and sleep better, I saw some limitations with simply using a step-counter with some additional function). Flex can give you some feedback on sleep and provides a way to enter data related to what you eat in related application. There just wasn’t enough feedback and tracking the food I eat was never been something that enticed me. The Microsoft Band 2 went on sale with the siren song of more more information and a bit of a productivity boost. I thought I would give it a shot.
What a difference it made. Part of that difference is the Microsoft health app and the related website http://dashboard.Microsofthealth.com. I started tracking daily weight. Over the next couple weeks, I could start seeing a pattern in the data that walking was not having the same impact on my health as it did when I started. Based on my heart rate and other indicators, I could see that the sessions of walking that used to improve my fitness or at least maintaining it, now they were simply denoted as having light impact. I had become fit enough through the walking that, short of serious speed walking, I had reached a plateau. I could not get my heart rate up enough to have a serious impact on improving my health simply by walking any longer. I don’t think I would’ve come to that conclusion without the data that Microsoft Band 2 provided. So, if somebody were to talk to me about a fitness device, I would say opt for one that has at least an optical heart rate monitor.
Courtesy of Microsoft.com
Based on that feedback, I changed my program to begin to run. I say “begin” because I actually used what Microsoft calls a guided workout. This is a workout that you can load down to the Band and it will take each step vibrate on your rest and give you text related to what you should be doing. I used it to start with a run-walk workout. Now, this was designed to be a minute of walking then 2 minutes of running for 30 mins. After the first part of the first session, I did 1 minute of running and 2 minutes of walking. Within two weeks I switched it up to the normal program. Within a few weeks, however, I was forced to focus more on fitness in the gym and less on running due to challenges pounding pavement brought to my legs. During this whole period, I have been losing roughly a couple pounds a week and was now down 20 Ibs (or 1.5 stone to my friends in the UK). For me, the guided workouts are a godsend because it takes all of the temptation to be guided by how I feel at the moment and simply gives me the next step to do.
Courtesy Winbeta
So far, I haven’t given any deep technical review of Microsoft Band 2 over other fitness devices that can monitor heart rate, sleep and have some mechanism for providing a guided workout while providing productivity apps. Nor will I do so. There aren’t a ton of those devices and they all have their quirks. For me, it’s a really good combination of a productivity tool, with phone, text, email, and calendar notifications with built-in Cortana (digital personal assistant) integration, and its primary role as a fitness device. The Apple Watch seems more productivity and less fitness focused and most of the Fitbit products seem more fitness and less productivity focused. I like that Microsoft continues to develop new applications such as Explore which provides great information for hiking such as longitude/latitude coordinates, compass heading, trekking rate of climb and providing a picture of the climate and terrain if you have GPS on. Is it perfect? No. The GPS doesn’t always acquire the signal and sometimes takes longer than it should to do so. Cortana just recently became fully functional with a fix for Microsoft. For me, it is the right combination.
So what have I learned so far?
Real data is key. Whether it’s heart rate, weight, how good my sleep is, or improvement on split times, getting detailed, solid data is foundational for making good choices about what you do next. In my case, I would still just be walking had I not gotten feedback that it wasn’t really doing that much for me. I love being able to track my improvement and the Health app provides feedback on personal bests.
Clearly, fitness devices won’t make you fit or healthy. They only provide you information for you to use. That information, however, can make all the difference. I make a marginally better effort to getting reasonable sleep knowing that my Band will tell me how poorly I did if I don’t improve.
Sometimes the data surprising and sometimes it’s not. It’s always helpful.
As all the literature and everyone will tell you, this is a life journey. I’m just barely into it and there will come a time, I hope, I’m maintaining weight rather than losing it, but there will never be a time where I don’t have to pay attention. Whether that’s to my sleep, what I eat or whether I workout that day.
Even with all the great downloadable workouts, tons of information on the web and pressure to measure up, chill. Seriously, it’s you, your body and your pace. If I felt obligated to do my first run-walk as designed, I may have given up. Take your time. It’s not a diet, it’s not a phase, it’s a life change. It’s all about improvement and personal bests. Don’t worry about others or expectations.
There are always options. If running is not working for you, and in my case the high impact nature of it is too much for me, find something else. I’m now working on ellipticals and rowing machines as well as strength exercises to tone muscle.
Change up your workout as your fitness changes. While starting to just reduce eating and sleep more, based on the information I received, I changed my workout to run. Based on the weight loss, I started strength training to reduce muscle loss and keep up metabolism. Be flexible (literally and figuratively) with your workout.
There are challenges with losing weight. The above-referenced need to tone muscle is one of them. You lose muscle mass along with fat. I’ve seen sag where I’ve never seen sag before, hence the toning. You also have the challenge of your wardrobe, especially in transition. Nothing is gonna fit perfectly for a while. The upsides clearly outweigh these few challenges, but it’s good to remember that there are challenges.
So, we can talk about the Band’s 11 sensors, improved ergonomic design, or its less than stellar battery life. All of those are interesting points. Ultimately, however, it’s a tool to help you be more productive and become fitter. Your mileage may (and likely will) differ. It’s been an effective tool for me.
The Confluence series is quickly becoming one of my favorites due to its world-building, strong characters (without being one-dimensional) and relationships. I particularly like that Jane Holloway and her crew are strong and willing to do what must be done without tons of aggression ala Star Trek.
Jennifer Foehner Wells‘ series began with Fluency (reviewed here) in which a team of astronauts investigate an alien ship only to find out that it’s abandoned except for its navigator who looks startlingly like an octopus or Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. They get caught up in saving the ship and themselves. In Remanence, they set “…off to return that ship’s marooned navigator to his home world, determined to discover who was behind the genocide that destroyed his original crew.” [from Amazon’s plot summary].
Jennifer Foehner Wells
[Note: read Fluency prior to reading this review, it have Fluency spoilers, and Remanence]
Let me address the world-building of this series first. While interesting and novel, it’s not so much the species, planets or technology that make it so intriguing but the perspective. Ms. Wells focus is on the culture of the worlds rather than the mechanics. While this is true of other ScitFi novels, this is an area where the protagonist’s focus on communication accentuates the cultural aspect of these worlds and people. If that sounds boring to you, it’s not. I want to emphasize that all of this is brought out through the narrative, dialog and interaction. Little “straight” exposition is used.
Not only is it a brilliant move to make Jane Holloway a linguist from a world building perspective, it also deemphasizes a military focus. For all of that, Jane Holloway is strong. If we look more closely at Jane Holloway’s strength of character and leadership in the midst of normal and extreme tension, we see an “ordinary” hero. So often we’re tempted to feel obligated to overdo a character to rid ourselves of stereotypes. Hence, the literarily butt-kicking women who fight among the best as well as are brilliant and emotionally adjusted. There is a place for that, but I like Ms. Wells’ protagonist who is strong but not “action-hero” strong. She is able to withstand pain, adjudicates amongst different species and navigates multiple challenging relationships, romantic and otherwise, while still commanding her ship during tense moments while feeling the weight of responsibility. In this day of seemingly daily acts of violence, it’s refreshing to see strength portrayed without aggression.
I seriously liked Fluency; I love Remanence. It is a nearly perfectly executed sequel: it provides a deeper dive into all characters and relationships. There is a consistently smooth progression of the storyline with no major jerks or cheats but still plenty of surprises. We also come to a deeper understanding of the world Wells creates with new aspects and people groups brought int but always in a consistent way that drives the story.
The characters of the book are multi-dimensional and grow (or we grow to know them more) in Remanence. Their relationships are well done, especially the relationships between the humans and aliens. These characters and the circumstances in which they find themselves have the mark of authenticity. Her aliens feel starkly “other” but accessible. Most of the events are ones with which we can identify but on a more low-key level (except for the great by an extraordinary ending.
Ms. Wells tackles issues of freedom and responsibility, appropriate use of violence and culture/species bias. She incorporates these as part of the story and, following great SciFi tradition, tackles these social issues head-on without being preachy or “making a point.” This is primarily a story and the narrative rules the day but one that addresses important and interesting nevertheless.
In sum, Ms. Wells has a clear, consistent vision of her series’ world. Her characters and relationships amongst the crew and the alien species are complex and interesting, made even more so when worked through the lens of a linguist’s understanding of complex communications that goes beyond mere language. She portrays strength without an emphasis on firepower and builds the narrative well. One of the other things I like about Ms. Well writing is that she knows how to end a story in a series well. There is a well-hewn balance between completing the current novel and alluding to the next. Clearly, I highly recommend Remanence and will take up the next in the series as soon as it is available.
In Susan Kaye Quinn‘s opening salvo in the Mindjacking trilogy, Open Minds, it’s tough being a teen and being substantially different. It seems our dear Kira is a Zero – she can’t read others thoughts as can most in society once of age. Readers thoughts are open to each other; Zeros can’t be read and, hence, can’t be trusted. They can keep secrets. In the scheme of things, it wasn’t that long ago that Readers were the odd ones, they were mistrusted because they can read you. Now that they were the majority, they looked askance at everyone else. Some things never change. In addition to trying to navigate life as a Zero while in high school (ugh), she accidentally discovers she can control others thoughts and down the mindjacking rabbit-hole she goes.
Open Minds has a clever premise that is well executed. Susan Kaye Quinn builds a consistent vision of this oppressive world where being different can get you locked up in jail, or worse. While this is clearly a targeted YA book, her characters and relationships are built to the point where they seem real. Often these characters make unwise decisions as we do in “real” live. For example, our protagonist gets involved with two guys, one of whom plays on her not being “normal” like him. They’re odd together. Avoiding spoilers one way or another, he has the image of a “bad boy.” It’s one of the more interesting love triangles I’ve read with real plausibility. Like this triangle, the relationships developed seem natural, the characters, have reasonable depth and her world is sparkling new and intriguing. These mind-talents also lend themselves to great story material.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I went between the Kindle and Audible versions of the book, spending the majority of my time with the audiobook. Kelli Shane provides narration for the book. Ms. Shane seemed to have an uneven performance. There are times when her timing, pitch, and tone are spot-on and others where she sounds like she’s reading a book report for a 10th grade English class. The words are neutrally placed before us with no emphasis, timing or pitch variations. I don’t know if she was left alone in a recording booth and there was no direction when she wavered from a full-blooded performance, but while she never becomes monotone and completely devoid of emotional connection to the material, it comes across weakly. Her narration is professional enough to not distract but it doesn’t really add to the book either.
Overall, Ms. Quinn’s writing matches the audience and her fast narrative approach. It’s fairly straight-forward and uncomplicated. The characters are well-developed and her world is fascinating. Open Minds is a worthwhile read; I’ve already picked up the sequel, Close Hearts and will review it separately.