As I’ve mentioned, I love non-fiction. I enjoy facts, details, numbers, and everything that explains and educates. History fascinates me even though I realize that often what seems like the absolute truth is actually based on an interpretation of people and events of the time. We know that eyewitnesses, regardless of their vantage point, see, hear, and internalize differently.
I also accept that when I read an outlandish “fact’ I must double or triple check as sometimes these are really opinions or ideas reshaped to meet the need of the moment.
Recently several books I’ve read refer to birds, particularly those of the corvid variety: crows, ravens, and magpies. I just started 'Gifts of the Crow' by John Marzluff and Tony Angell. Considered to be bright, the authors detail birds’ brains, not to be confused with a colloquial term “birdbrain”.
Corvids use many skills honed over time and through experience to solve mysteries, store then relocate food supplies months later, and even determine friend versus foe as they soar above people far below. Marzluff and Angell also discuss eight traits examined: language, delinquency, insight, frolic, passion, wrath, risk taking, and awareness.
While these feel-like elements of being human, they are also linked to non-humans – birds! I appreciate these eight and look forward to watching my feathered friends more carefully. “By observing nature, we can bring a sharper focus to ourselves and how we fit into the system of life.”
Another quote, “In humans, 20 percent of our daily energy intake goes straight to the brain.” I imagine the energy in my heart and lungs, limbs, and joints, but all of that going toward brain power? That’s awesome.
Discussion follows of waking moments and the requirements of sleep to regenerate our cognition, and then out pops this, “… in fact a bird is able to put one hemisphere of its brain to sleep while the other side works.
This is especially important to migrating and oceanic birds who must sleep on the wing.” Now I’m wondering about the times I awaken in the middle of the night, toss and turn and when I glance at the clock, I realize that an hour or two has slipped by. Was I really wide-eyed all of that time or perhaps, like a bird, one hemisphere dozed. Pleasant thought.
As for novels, research finds that as we age, fiction becomes ever more valuable to mental enhancement. Vivid images, character descriptions, innovative methods and processes force the mind to wander, design, create, and construct images from words; concepts from depictions; representations from portrayals.
To remember a story, mind sketches are vital. Even though hundreds read the same book, chances are each has an individual version of the plot, unique pictures of the characters and setting, and personal principles applied in light of the problem and solution.
A good book mesmerizes as it subtly teaches and guides. I judge the quality of a book on the vision and lesson(s) gained. I also, unfairly at times, condemn a book because of an error such as wrong era or characterization That’s just me.
In 'West with Giraffes' by Lynda Rutledge, historical fiction based on 1938 giraffe acquisition at the San Diego Zoo, I note that research intertwins in the story but that also, dialog and facts have to be toyed with to clarify the time, the test, the trip, and the memories involved.
My mind whirled as this page-turner shed light on a marvelous, cross-country adventure with a zookeeper and a young boy. Each bump in the road, twist or turn, good times or rough ones, Boy and Girl, as the giraffes are called, spread joy to adults and kids along the route. Highlight moments come at feeding time when onions are doled out as a tasty delight.
I remember a circus coming to Hailey when I was five or six and my sisters walking me down to the fairgrounds. We did not have money for entry tickets, however, the giraffes didn’t care as they swayed their heads and necks over the fence to greet us.
Another recollection includes when grandkids fed the zoo giraffes. Perched on a platform to meet the animals eye-to-eye, long, black tongues lolled out to wrap around an onion ring that they quickly popped into an awaiting mouth.
You tell me — which is best? Non-fiction or fiction? Fact or opinion? Truth or fantasy? Or is it all of these that transform the brain to lofty heights?