August 23, 2024

The Humorous Book Club

Today starts the second book club I've ever been a part of; reading Design that Scales

We called ourselves, “The Humorous Book Club.”

As we moved onto our third and fourth books, I found it funny that each of them had mentioned the four humors—a system of understanding health that fell out of style once germs were discovered.

The books we read were:

• Scurvy
  How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail
  Stephen Bown

• Cannibalism
  A Perfectly Natural History
  Bill Schutt

• The Hot Zone
  The Chilling True Story of an Ebola Outbreak
  Richard Preston

• The Origin of Feces
  What Excrement Tells Us about Evolution, Ecology, and a Sustainable Society
  David Waltner-Toews

• Dark Archives
  A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
  Megan Rosenbloom

Three of us—growing to five from 2018–2020—would read then meet up at a drinking establishment around Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam to discuss the topic.

I enjoyed the conversations and reflections on what we read. I’m sure they were also interesting topics to hear discussed over drinks—scurvy, cannibalism, ebola, feces, books bound in human skin, and other infectious diseases.

Discussing books with others

Despite being an avid reader throughout most of my life, it’s been rare that I’ve been able to talk about or discuss the books I read with someone in depth. Most of the time, I’ll be sharing about a book because the other hadn’t read it.

Disclaimer: There are so many books that have been written, realeasing daily, and still being written that it’s ridiculous to expect everyone to have read the same materials. It’s also ridiculous to set a precedent that books are the end-all-be-all of story—that’s what’s fun about storytelling and the state of story-sharing these days: the diversity of mediums and stories created.

This group was the first time I had a chance to read along with others, and discuss them:

• from a writing standpoint—e.g. style of writing, use of words, rhythm & pacing;

• from a content standpoint—e.g. biases, scientific fact, learning new things; and

• form a contextual standpoint—e.g. when was the book written, is it still relevant, how things have changed since.

A fun memory was while we were discussing feces, poop, excrement, shit.

The scientist of the group complained that there was so much more that could be discussed, and it felt like a missed opportunity by the author to talk about the newer science.

I looked to the copyright page: published 2013. I responded, “this was before that was a common thing; let’s look to see when fecal transplants actually started.”

The fall of that year the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started approving fecal transplants to better gut bacteria, after the “landmark” study was so effective that it stopped early.

In fact, it was so effective that the study was stopped early and FMTs were administered to patients in other treatment arms because not doing so was considered unethical.1

So, the book had been published just as the modern science was figuring out, “oooh, a good way to use good shit.”

Today, I start joining a new book club

I’m going to be reading & discussing Design that Scales by Dan Mall.

Dan’s been building, consulting, and teaching people how to build design systems for over a decasde with his design systems consultancy SuperFriendly.

Now he’s creating Design System University—this book is culmination of all his learnings.

It’ll be four sessions—1–3 about the content; and the final session will be a Q&A with the Dan himself!

Excited for the ensuing discussions.