The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

Novelist Henry James seems like an unlikely partner to fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Dan Simmons pairs them in his novel The Fifth Heart. James provides Holmes with access to the inner circle of American politics, where Holmes investigates the death of Clover Adams, wife of historian Henry Adams. Together, they thwart an attempt to assassinate President Grover Cleveland at the opening of the Chicago Columbian Exhibition.

In some ways, Simmons draws from the weakest of genre writing, such as the fortunate happenstance of James and Holmes meeting on the bank of the Seine, where the story begins. Simmons writing in this style is not weak, though. He also writes in more literary style, though not a densely written as James’ novels, and uses the likes of upper-class dinner parties to explore social customs and mores.

One of the ways Simmons creates a deep sense of the setting is by constantly dropping names. Many of the characters in the book, or their real counterparts, were famous or well-connected in their day and actually knew each other, such as Adams, the Hays, James, and Samuel Clemens. They also knew, or knew about, a lot of other famous or well-connected people, so the discussion of all these names seems natural. I started jotting down the names, and I recorded more than 100 (some are listed below). Some were fictional (like Hercule Poirot), but many were real people.

On the whole, the novel is a good adventure full of interesting characters. Simmons goes a little deep into philosophy in a consideration of what it means to be a real person, or the potential reality of fictional people (Holmes suspects he may be fictional). The book can be enjoyed without sweating that point.

In a sense, all the characters in the book are fictional, even if they are based on real people. The Holmes of this novel describes the symptoms that indicate he may be fiction, such as the fog he experiences between adventures, and the James of this novel experiences the same thing. Of course, many of us experience arriving home from work and having almost no recollection of driving, so some fogginess may be a natural part of memories and the way we form them (or don’t form them).

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Fic by Anne Jamison

The Peerless Peer by Philip Jose Farmer

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

Simmons, Dan. The Fifth Heart. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

Henry Adams

Marian (Clover) Hooper Adams

Irene Adler [fictional]

Alexander Agassiz

William Waldorf Astor

Henry Ward Beecher

John Bonfield

Paul Bourget

William G. Brock

Daniel Hudson Burnam

James Donald Cameron

Walter Camp

Enrico Caruso

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Frances Folsom Cleveland

Grover Cleveland

Willkie Collins

Edward Compton

Stephen Crane

Captain Sir George Mansfield Smith Cumming

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

Montague Druitt (suspected of being Jack the Ripper)

Andrew L. Drummond

Edmund Gosse

H. Rider Haggard

Carter Henry Harrison

Adelbert “Del” Hay

Clara Hay

Helen Julia Hay

John Hay

Sven Anders Hedin

Mycroft Holmes [fictional character]

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Sherlock Holmes [fictional character]

Isabella Beecher Hooker

Edward Hooper

William Dean Howells

Victoria Woodhull

Henry Irving

Henry James

Francis Scott Key

Phillip Barton Key

Clarence King

Rudyard Kipling

Peter Kropotkin

Fritz Krupp

Louis Jean-Baptist Lepine

Henry Cabot Lodge

Robert McClaughry

George McClellan

Charles Macready

Errico Maltesta

William Melville

Sebastian Moran [fictional character]

James Nolan Moriarty [fictional character]

Richard Monckton Milnes

Carl Gottfried Neumann

Charles H. Pearson

Hercule Poirot [fictional character]

Henry Rathbone

Elisee Reclus

Henrietta Reubell

Henry Hobson Richardson

Edmund Rice

Elizabeth Robins

William Rockhill

Theodore Roosevelt

John Singer Sargent

Rudolph Schnaubelt

Heinrich Schliemann

William Seward

Daniel Sickles

Teresa Bagioli Sickles

Ainsworth Rand Spofford

Edwin Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Adlai E. Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Benjamin Tayloe

Annie Royle Taylor

Minnie Temple

Emile Jean-Horace Vernet

Carl Aver von Welsbach

A. B. Walkley

Fanny White

Garnet Wolseley

Constance Fenimore Woolson

Unfu*k Yourself by Gary John Bishop

Gary John Bishop offers straightforward, and sometimes rudely stated, advice on getting your life together in Unfu*k Yourself. If you’re drawn in by the title of the of the book, you may feel your life is screwed up. Bishop suggests it is very likely your own fault, but you have the power to do something about it.

 “You have the life your willing to put up with,” Gary John Bishop, Unfu*k Yourself

It starts in your head. Thousands of thoughts flow through your mind every day and many of them are nonsense. Instead of reacting to crazy-making thoughts and feelings, let them go. You can learn to choose the thoughts you pay attention to.

Even so, our head can get in the way. The blessing and curse of our minds is that they are really good at moving us toward what we want. Subconsciously we all want security. Unfortunately, our subconscious minds can have some messed up ideas about what security is and how to achieve it. We achieve security with great success even if it makes us miserable.

Fortunately, we can train our minds to achieve a different success. We can learn to let go of thought that drive our self-defeating behavior.

We can reinforce our changing habits of thought by taking action. Rather than getting wrapped up on our own heads a fighting thoughts and feelings that come from our imaginations, we an face reality and do things that might actually make life better. Action is both the cure for self-defeating thoughts and the way to handle real problems.

As the title of the book, it is part of the trend in self-help to use tough talk and crude language. I don’t know that I need that to get a kick in the pants. However, I appreciate writing that uses simple language and gets to the point; Bishop does that.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Language and the Pursuit of Happiness by Chalmers Brothers

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

You are a Badass by Jen Sincero

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Bishop, Gary John. Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life. New York: HarperOne, 2016.

Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people

Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other kind.

-John Adams

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Though we might like to imagine ourselves exercising a lot of conscious control over our lives, a lot—perhaps half—of what we do in a day is habitual. Our habits can make us or break us. Fortunately, we can change our habits.

 Of course learning new habits is not always easy, especially when it comes to breaking old habits. We’ve learned a lot about how we how our brains work in forming habits that can help. James Clear organizes this into a system in Atomic Habits.

 Before he gets started, though, Clear makes an interesting point. Our identities can be wrapped up in our habits. It can be hard to stop a behavior we identify with. It can be hard to start something new and stick with it if we think of it as out of character for ourselves. If we want to be different, we have to believe we can be different and picture ourselves that way.

 Clear lays out four laws for creating habits that are easy to adopt. The inverse of these laws can make a behavior more difficult and help us break bad habits.

 Effective habits are obvious (in your face cues about what to do), attractive, easy and they provide immediate rewards. The more of these characteristics you can bring to your new habit the better. Set up your environment and daily routines to bring the behavior you want into your awareness. Find ways to link it to other things you want. Remove obstacles and concentrate on small, doable changes.  Find a way to get something  out of performing now (consistent with you goal) to carry you until the more long-term payoffs of the behavior kick in.

 The inverse of these work to weaken bad habits. Put reminder and triggers of old behaviors out of sight. Find ways to make it distasteful and unappealing. Put barriers in the way of performing the old habit---make it harder. Creates disincentive and make it costly.

 Clear provides several examples from his own life and from others. The book is peppered with references to his web site where he provides additional examples, forms and worksheets.

 I previously wrote about this book here.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross & Carlo C. DiClemente

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

This Year I Will... by M. J. Ryan

 Clear, James. Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Habits. New York: Avery, 2018.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Habits have a profound impact on our lives. They are behaviors we repeat, sometimes automatically, and by repetition, their effects accumulate. It would be great if our habits supported us in being the people we want to be, and if they did not reinforce things we would like to change. James Clear describes how habits work and a system for getting them to work for you in Atomic Habits.

Before working on habits, you need to work on beliefs. Beliefs always win out, and your habits are, to a degree, a manifestation of your beliefs. Fortunately, working on habits can support new beliefs about yourself. You can set up small wins that support your belief in your new identity.

You can also give yourself a break by taking the focus off goals, which can seem overwhelming. Instead, focus on systems. Focus on the things you do, especially the things you do repeatedly, that move you toward being who you want to be. Instead of noticing the gap between where you are and a goal, you can encourage yourself by noticing the progress you make.

Clear describes the process of habit formation. It starts with a cue, which triggers the brain to start a behavior in anticipation of a reward. We experience a craving, a motivation or desire for the reward. As a response, we perform the habitual behavior. Finally, we get a reward that satisfies the craving. Unfortunately, that reward may not satisfy us in helpful ways. We can take advantage of this system to reinforce new behavior patterns and interrupt old patterns.

We can take advantage of the cue by making them more obvious (to trigger wanted behavior) or making them invisible (to prevent the triggering of bad habits). We can rig the craving by making the potential reward more or less attractive. We can make it easier or more difficult to perform a habitual behavior. We can also make the reward more or less satisfying. To superpower these strategies, we can stack them.

In his book, Clear provides several ways to implement these strategies for making and breaking habits. As you develop and implement your habit change strategy, Clear encourages you to seek sweet spot. It will be challenging, and that sense of challenge can be a great motivator, but if you take on to much at once or too large a change, you are likely to experience a failure that can be disheartening. Little wins are great rewards, especially when the feel earned, so seek changes that you can realistically achieve, but that you’ll need to stretch to reach.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross & Carlo C. DiClemente

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

This Year I Will... by M. J. Ryan

Clear, James. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. New York: Avery, 2018.