Marcus
Despite some initial warning signs (enumerated list, self help), the fantastic cover art and the fact that this book is about Montaigne drew me in. I've started reading his Essays several times and always bailed for one reason or another. I picked this up hoping it would give me some context and get me more excited to read, and maybe even finish the essays. It did. How to Live isn't just a biography of Montaigne, it's a history of Essays with a ton of rich context and interesting descriptions of the ways they have been influential throughout history. The 20 answers to the question of “how to live” don't define the book as much as give it some nice structure.
Instead of urging constant improvement like a typical self help book would do, How to Live feels like it's written to give you permission to live a more examined life. Montaigne didn't go through life explicitly seeking improvement, instead he sought eudaimonia or “human flourishing.” Often, finding that meant cutting back, spending more time alone, doing a good job but not a great job, focusing less on relationships and more on knowing and being comfortable with yourself. His essays, rather than preaching, are simply observations, mostly about his internal world.
Knowing Montaigne a little better, I feel more free to abstain from having an opinion on anything and everything. Montaigne is famous for reviving the Pyrrhonian Stoicsm idea of epohke which means “I suspend judgement,” or as Sextus put it more verbosely, “I now feel in such a way as neither to posit dogmatically nor to reject any of the things falling under this investigation.” Epohke is different from the contemporary concept of open-mindedness. Today to be open-minded is to accept everything and everyone as they are. Epohke doesn't have a goal of acceptance, it is goalless. It's an approach that may not work all the time, but settling in to that mode of thought, even for a short period of time, can be incredibly freeing.
Even in his stoicism Montaigne was not dogmatic. He summarized himself as “extremely idle, extremely independent, both by nature and by art.” What he did he did because he wanted to. Honor played a part, civic-mindedness played a part, love of his friends and family played a part, but overall he was true to himself. It's hard for me to grasp this entirely, but How to Live gave me a good start and made me excited to read more. Shakespeare was influenced by Montaigne and on occasion heavily borrowed from his works. Nietzsche was influenced by him, Flaubert, Joyce, Rousseau, Descartes and Virginia Wolf were all very heavily influenced by Montaigne and after reading How to Live, I'm going to very humbly throw my name into that list too.
Sometimes you can take a simple idea and write a whole book about it and it have the book be incredibly successful. The War of Art does this. The idea is that resistance is the enemy of creativity and beating it is the way to become creatively productive.
The topic is explored from a number of angles and by the time you finish it (which will be quick, it's a short book) you should be motivated enough to get off the couch and write, paint, code or do whatever is art for you.
It's worth a read and I'm rating it highly because even though the topic is simple and the book is short, reading it is a low price to pay if it's enough to bump you out of a rut and up to the next level of creativity.
The Neddiad really lives up to the awesome cover art that drew Max (age 7) and I to the book in the first place. It starts off thoughtful and interesting; a kid in 1940's America with a quirky family doing all-American things. It quickly gets strange. Very, very strange. I really liked how despite the weirdness and among all the ghosts, aliens, shamans and legends the story keeps its reflective charm. The ending is abrupt but it's a fun book and we're looking forward to The Yggyssey.
Imagine being a fly on the wall at a dinner party hosted by Vladimir Nabokov (RIP) with Cormac McCarthy and Eminem as guests. Three guys who have faced their demons and lived to share them with the world. I don't know what they'd eat, but I bet their post meal conversation would be enough to shrivel your little tiny black fly wings.
It's been argued that the purpose of literature isn't to make you a better person, but that it is to help you understand yourself. If that's the case, it puts an interesting perspective on books like this that expose the darkest side of humanity. Child of God is a story that was written by a guy who is just as human as I am, and who was brave (if bravery is what you'd call it) enough to not run from his most depraved thoughts, and instead do what to me seems incredibly counterintuitive, and put them on paper for the world to see.
I feel like McCarthy has, in a sense, allowed me to dip into myself and understand, or possibly remember, that buried deep down in me there are two sides, one good and another that is in no abstract way, bad. And that as a result of a million things, conscious choice being the least of them, I have lived up to this point avoiding for the most part the evil side. I'm not patting myself on the back. The more I think about it, and when I read books like Child of God, the more certain I feel that a large part of who I am, who we are, is determined long before we draw our first breath.
The implications of that statement are as big or as small as you want to make them. I am still not sure what it means, and I'm not trying to take any political or sociological or any other -ical stand. That's simply the way things are. I don't think realizing that necessarily changes the way I will live my life and it probably doesn't mean I am any better or worse off than I was before I read this, except that I have benefited by getting a glimpse of humanity that I would not have dared to dig up for myself.
So, I'll leave writing about subjects like mass murder, incest, rape and pedophilia to our dinner party guests and try not to judge them too harshly for dwelling on them, and at the same time, try not to judge myself too harshly for reading them, and, though I don't like saying it, enjoying it.
A large part of the book is spent explaining whether and why anyone would want to teach their baby to read. Will it HURT them? Will it RETARD their growth? Will it OVER-PRESSURE them? Etc. If you're already convinced that teaching your baby to read isn't going to mortally wound their infant souls then you'll be happy to have your intuition confirmed by data, and you can then proceed to skim the first 100 pages
The rest of the book gives a system for creating cards and starting to expose the baby to words until he or she can read. Treating reading like a game and doing it in small doses seems to work, as evidenced by the numerous testimonials towards the end of the book.
In this, the 21st century when we are amazed and privileged to live in the presence of devices such as the iPad and the iPhone there is, naturally, an app for that. Actually there are several. Dozens even. I chose “My First Words” which seems to have been designed by someone familiar with this book. So far, baby likes learning to read. Loves it. Is enthralled by it, and shows no signs of emotional or physical distress.
Check it out. Along with the app it makes teaching the little people the ways of the book easy and, as I mentioned, fun.
This was an accidental read. I ordered a used book on Amazon and this came instead. Not one to waste an opportunity to read a free book before I have to send it back, I spent a couple hours reading it. It's decent. Bennion touches on some tough issues for Mormons and ways he, as a self-proclaimed liberal in a mostly conservative church, felt about them. It's thoughtful and sometimes even illuminating. Overall though the organization was a little haphazard and many of the ideas of the book were pretty familiar to me already.
Great adaptation of Beowulf for kids. The language is simplified but the story is fully in tact.
This book was hilarious. It contains every possible cliché in Argentina and Uruguay and presents all in a hilarious story that strikes close to home for anyone involved in the ongoing conflict. Besides... how could anyone not like a book with a bag of yerba mate in camouflage on the cover?
I can't imagine a book that could portray everyday life more faithfully and more poetically than Crossing to Safety. Some of my admiration for the book probably comes from the fact that I fall right in the middle of the target audience. I'm white, married with children, middle class, about the same age as the main characters are for a large part of the story, went to college and have lived in both the East and Western United States. Being so perfectly aligned with the demographics of the main characters in the book, I felt that with every page and every scene, something that could have happened to me or to my friends or family was happening. The only difference was the time period in which the story takes place, and this difference was enough to take what otherwise could have been mundane and made it fascinating and intimate. I felt I was transported back a couple generations to what life could have been for me.
I don't know how this book would be received by someone from another country or someone who grew up differently in the US, but for me, it's a story of friendships and experiences that I are close enough to home as to make them something I can aspire to live for myself.
It's a little cheesy at times:
“Truly, Priscilla,” he said, “when I see you spinning and spinning,
Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others,
Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed in a moment;
You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beautiful Spinner.”
“Look! you can see from this window my brazen howitzer planted
High on the roof of the church, a preacher who speaks to the purpose,
Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresistible logic,
Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts of the heathen.
This book is full of the type of psychology studies that make me really question the validity of psychology as a scientific discipline. There is surely something to the idea that decision making process is susceptible the bad influence of evolved mental heuristics, but I feel like that concept is stretched to the breaking point here.
Several of the studies in the book are found here http://psychfiledrawer.org/ in the “couldn't replicate” category which is, in case you're wondering, not a good place to be.
I read this book after watching a talk given by Benjamin Zander at Davos and another he gave at a TED conference. In person, he is inspiring, likable and he comes across as a genuinely good human being. Much of that comes across in his writing as well. He's a natural story teller and his passion for music and life are contagious.
Digital Gold is a rolling history of the weirdos, idealists, criminals, rich and famous, and sometimes even pragmatic people who carried the compulsively misunderstood idea of bitcoin from the mind and hard drive of Satoshi to where it is today, a multi-billion dollar currency (or commodity, depending on who you ask).
The book flows smoothly from Silicon Valley investors to druggies peddling their wares on hidden Tor websites run by would-be murders-by-proxy. It dips into economic history and the complex technology of the blockchain without ever being boring or slow. It's readable, riveting, and relevant.
The last chapter on global warming is a must read. It's a far cry from the quasi-religious rhetoric of most of environmentalists. Instead, it's a practical look at a potential problem with suggested solutions that don't entail crippling the entire world economy. It exposes Al Gore, who is mentioned several times by name, and his ilk as the dishonest luddites they are. No matter what your current stance on global warming is, the chapter is worth a read.
I found the rest of book less than super. A couple chapters, the one on carseats and the one on altruism, would have made great blog entries. There are several regurgitated studies that appear frequently in other behavioral economics books, an inordinate amount of time spent on prostitution and examples that didn't come as much of a surprise to someone who believes in the free market. This book definitely wasn't the bang that Freakonomics was, instead it's more like a toned down, extended version of the first book.
Sowell's arguments are more complex than this, but if you want the general idea of the book, here it is:
Housing became unaffordable in many cities due to laws that restricted land use and sale.
Fewer people could afford the more expensive homes so government, to promote higher home ownership and end ostensibly racist lending practices, imposed regulations that encouraged, and in some cases, forced lenders to offer loans to under-qualified applicants.
People who couldn't otherwise afford to buy homes took advantage of the newly available financing and bought houses. The large influx of borrowers who were previously priced out of the market led to a housing boom. After a short period of time many of these new homeowners found they couldn't pay their mortgages, leading to large numbers of foreclosures and the subsequent housing bust.
Sowell would place probably 75% of the blame on government and politicians and divide the remaining 25% on lenders (Wall Street etc.) and borrowers.
You may disagree with some or all of that summary, but before you write the book and his ideas off completely, it's worth your time to read it. It's short and easy to digest and Sowell is a master of presenting ideas clearly and logically.
Let Reality 2.0 serve as a cautionary tale to all who might choose to embark on a journey of exploration that involves heavy use of psychedelic drugs and deep immersion in arcana. Here we have an intelligent and well-spoken person who starts off with an illuminating description of the psychedelic landscape then quickly devolves into what most would consider “the deep end.” In this case, the pool is filled with:
- Mayan prophecies, especially with regards to the year 2012
- Hopi Rain Dances and speculation on consciousness influencing atmospheric conditions
- Crop circles
- A demon that follows him around and opens drawers etc., and has to be expelled in a cleansing ceremony led by a witch
- His rejection of monogamy in favor of polyamory (no surprise there really)
- Marxism as a form of world communalism as a political philosophy that he seems to espouse but never fully elucidates
- Benevolent galactic influences. E.g. UFOs summoned through meditation
And to top it off, we get the authors own prophecy, which he reveals with some trepidation, that he himself is some type of savior of the world.
Take care. It could happen to you.
Quotable.
“”Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.”
“Memory is hunger.”
“To have come on all this new world of writing [...] was like having a great treasure given to you. You could take your treasure with you when you travelled too [...] there were always the books, so that you lived in the new world you had found, the snow and the forests and the glaciers and their winter problems [...] in the daytime, and at night you could live in the other wonderful world the Russian writers were giving you. At first there were the Russians; then there were all the others. But for a long time there were the Russians.”
and,
“People who interfered in your life always did it for your own good and I figured it out finally that what they wanted was for you to conform completely and never differ from some accepted surface standard and then dissipate the way traveling salesmen would at a convention in every stupid and boring way there was. They knew nothing of our pleasures nor how much fun it was to be damned to ourselves and never would know nor could know. Our pleasures, which were those of being in love, were as simple and still as mysterious and complicated as a simple mathematical formula that can mean all happiness or can mean the end of the world.
That is the sort of happiness you should not tinker with but nearly everyone you knew tried to adjust it.”
This book is awful. The language is unbelievably repetitive and the narrative style is as schizophrenic as the main character. Dostoyevsky calls the protagonist “our hero” 191 times and if that wasn't enough, just about every time he refers to him he also feels it necessary to say “the good Golyadkin, not the bad Golyadkin” or “the old Golyadkin and not the new Golyadkin.” It's so mind numbingly tedious that I could hardly get past it to take in the story.
I've always had a hard time with books that have no sympathetic characters, and this one definitely falls into that category. There's not a single character I could, or wanted to, identify with. It may be that you can write a story from the perspective of a schizophrenic and still have it turn out good, but Dostoyevsky certainly failed to do it here. It is painful for me to trash the book since Dostoyevsky is one of my all-time favorites, but the fact is, this book without such a famous author, would have have long been forgotten.
Huston Smith was a beautiful person. His passion and sincerity for the topic make this very brief overview of the world's religions and their relationship to science a pleasure to listen to.
I really enjoyed Mark Joyner's other book, The Irresistible Offer. He's clearly an expert marketer and knows what he's talking about in that arena. Unfortunately, Simpleology is nowhere near as good. For one, the book is largely a plug for his “web cockpit” software. I hate books whose sole (or primary) purpose is to sell me something. Despite that, I kept finished it since I know from his other book that he's a smart and insightful guy.
Simpleology is basically an explanation of the author's own utilitarian epistemology and instructions for how to apply it to your decision making process in a way that will help you reach your goals.
It's not so much that it's a bad epistemology, it's not, it's just not novel. In a nutshell it is this: challenge your assumptions, use the scientific method, use logic and learn to recognize logical fallacies, know your goals and take the most direct path towards reaching them.
Decent advice really, and for someone who hasn't thought much about how they want to determine truth, there are some interesting starting points in this book.
Overall though, my review is “meh.” Not bad (other than the slew of plugs for the “web cockpit,” that was terrible), not great.
This is a book about a stupid smart person and lots of stupid stupid people. That cast of characters is bound to be funny, but also to bring out every cynical tendency you have ever had. I didn't dislike it because it's bad. A Confederacy of Dunces is, as every other review points out, pretty brilliant. I disliked it because it left me with the same apathetic and jaded feeling I had after reading Catch 22.
This is a pretty good defense against anti-deflationary (inflationary) policies. I was hoping it would address what would happen in a “deflationary spiral” where deflation leads to currency hoarding and eventually the currency bubble bursting, possibly addressing historical incidences of that type of scenarios (if they exist). I found that while it didn't really address that situation specifically, it did have quite a bit to think about. Hülsmann shows pretty clearly how both inflation and deflation are harmful to certain members of society but in cases of deflation, those who benefit or are harmed are usually more visible while with deflation it's anonymous on both ends.
It's hard in such a short book to counter the thousands of pages of Keynesian economics that encourage inflation, but for what it is, Deflation and Liberty does a pretty good job.
