Brinens and Things

The Psychopath Inside by James Fallon

Imagine this: you are a go getting neuroscientist. Psychopathy isn't your main field of study, but you've been called in as an expert witness once your twice, and you have done some research on it. Unrelatedly, you need some brain scans of Normal People for a different study, so you use your family as 'normal people who will agree to do a brain scan' (and also there's a side benefit that there's been an Alzheimer's scare, and you can check no one has it.) And then one of your family members has a scan that's identical to a psychopaths.

Obviously, this is a mistake or a mean spirited prank, so you get rid of the patient ID used for blinding the study.

...and it turns out to be your own brain scan.

Also, when you mention this discovery to your colleagues, they go "you didn't know already?" Because it turns out, the whole time your esteemed neuroscientist and psychologist colleagues have been calling you a psychopath as a joke? They were not joking.

It's quite an interesting memoir, interspersed with neuroscience information, but it's very much the memoir of an unreliable narrator who keeps telling on himself? He doesn't quite understand other people or himself very well, and it shows.

Also, he comes across as more of an arsehole than I think he even realises? He's an old money libertarian who thinks committing arson is character building, cheated on his wife when she had cancer and-- okay. He would quibble with me saying he "believes in eugenics." So what I will say is that he thinks a very hard moral problem is squaring his belief for freedom for all, with the fact he is convinced that people from Palestine and East LA are destined to become genetically evil.

WEIRD BOOK BY A WEIRD GUY.

Witness by Louise Milligan

This is a book about how it sucks super bad to be a witness at a sexual assault trial in Australia.

The very short version is: witnesses go in unprepared and unsupported, and there are a lot of systemic things that encourage defense lawyers to be raging arseholes (eg it used to be a badge of pride to get a Bible thrown at you by a witness), and there are other systemic things where 'protecting the interests of the accused' and 'but surely we can treat them like witnesses to eg car crashes?' intersect badly with sexual assault survivors.

There are lot of interesting interviews with lawyers and survivors and researchers going into the details of how the system behaves and ended up that way. To choose a lighter example: did you know that in Australia, there's much fewer senior female defense barristers... because they keep becoming judges instead? (Judges have a salary and maternity leave; defense barristers are self employed, have to rent offices, and it's really hard to get new cases if you ever have to take a break.)

Milligan also uses a bunch of case studies of specific witnesses, and there's one that's very interesting: herself. You see, she ended up being called as a witness, and she is basically the picture of the "most well positioned witness." She was not herself assaulted, and was called as a witness because she spoke to a victim as a journalist. She was a former court reporter who studied law, she was able to consult with a lawyer, hell, she even had a lawyer from her employer in the public gallery. And it was still an awful experience where someone talked to her in a way no one in any other setting could do without being punched, where she got stuck in a 90 minute anus definition cul de sac, and where she got threatened with jail time for trying to maintain journalistic priviledge.

Spine of the World by RA Salvatore

I'm of two minds about this book: it's actually a pretty sympathetic and as far as I can tell accurate portrayal of a man who is a sexual assault survivor. Like, there is a serious attempt to portray the trauma, and the addiction can be a coping mechanism that causes a downward spiral. There's a weird 'winners don't do drugs' speech which comes across as strange, but charming. And I feel like I should grade it highly on a curve, seeing as it's a tie in fantasy novel.

But on the other hand, there's a major plot point that's a false rape accusation.

...and weirdly enough, I don't hate it.

Bizarre.

Bride's Story by Kaoru Mori

I have not completed this whole manga yet (it's still on going), but I feel I should recommend it. It's a slice of life manga set in ~1800s Central Asia, and the main characters are a young married couple. (Note: the husband is Very young, it's not played for sexy, and according to people who have read further along it is a very, very slow burn.)

Each chapter is about a different aspect of life, from embroidery to bread making to preparing for weddings, and it centers on the lives of women. It's very much a bride's story, and is about making your way in a new family as a new adult.

And the art is simply gorgeous.

I recommend it to anyone who likes Delicious in Dungeon, it has very similar vibes.