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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Check It Out: Data on death made engaging

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Ah, the 300s. Not sure what I mean by “the 300s?” For the past several weeks, I have been taking the reader on an abbreviated tour of the Dewey Decimal classification system. The journey has really just begun, with brief stops in the 000s, 100s and 200s. Now it’s time to tackle the 300s — very broadly known as the social sciences section. Not that the other Dewey areas aren’t impressive in scope, but there’s a lot of stuff packed into this particular call number. How much? Well, here’s a list of sub-categories: sociology, anthropology, statistics, political science, economics, law, public administration, social services, education, commerce, and customs and folklore. Whew! And the sub, sub-categories go on for much longer, so I think you can see that a boat-load of information is docked in this area. Speaking of boats, transportation falls in the 300s, so yes, you can find books about boats, too. Ahoy!

So, with such a broad spectrum of knowledge available to browse, how did I choose a book for this column? Well, in this case, I chose this week’s publication because of its title. Just that simple. “The Norm Chronicles” caught my eye, I wondered what in the wide, wide world of Dewey it could be about, I picked it up, and the next thing I knew, I found myself pulled into its pages.

Normally, statistics put me to sleep. Too many numbers, charts and graphs, and, sure enough, my mind starts to wander. But “The Norm Chronicles,” which is chock-full of numbers, managed to keep my interest because the numbers focus on negative events and behavior. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true. This is a book about risk and probability; and, not surprisingly, those two concepts often refer to unpleasant things —like death. I don’t mean to make this fascinating read sound morbid, but humans have long been enthralled, perhaps uneasily so, with risky, dangerous behavior and the statistics associated with such behavior. For instance, climbing Mount Everest has inherent risks and dangers; we all know that. But when we hear the number of people who successfully climbed Mount Everest versus the number of people who died in the attempt, we often recall the negative statistic better than the positive one. (As quoted from this week’s book: “By the end of 2011, 219 people were known to have died climbing Mount Everest, 1 for every 25 who reached the summit, since records started being kept in the 1920s.” This means a lot of people have not died while scaling this formidable mountain, but the negative statistic remains more memorable.)

From infancy to death, sex to drugs, vaccinations to surgery, “The Norm Chronicles” gives the reader much to ponder about how we “play the odds” in our everyday lives. As the authors point out in the book’s introduction, “… in places, this is almost a mini-encyclopedia of hazards.” Yet, despite the bog of statistics, as well as the gloomy environment in which “The Norm Chronicles” is centered, the authors do a great job of making complex and cheerless information engaging to the reader.

Instead of feeling depressed and/or paranoid after reading an entire book about — and I’ll just be blunt — everything that’s out to get us, I feel pretty okay. Life is a risky business, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Jan Johnston is the collection development coordinator for the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District. Email her at readingforfun@fvrl.org.

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