Marcus

The plot is good, it could have even been great but the book is ruined by SO MUCH cringe.

There are so many contemporary social agendas scattered throughout the text it's really hard to stay engaged with the plot at all.

Among them:
* whiteness, the great evil (“four great evils: capitalism, whiteness, patriarchy, nationalism.”)
* lotssss of starry-eyed anti-colonialism
* the tourist gaze (lol)
* fetishization of “other ways of knowing”
* lots of anti/post capitalism represented as some type of very late stage Marxian utopia (ie. incompatible with human nature)
* lots of fat studies influence. “Noticing how her potbelly hung over the hem of her spandex” is said with a straight face and supposed to be sexy...
* lots of pro-prostitution in the most naive way imaginable. “I remember what you said in the van,” he said, “that you have many boyfriends.” “Oh sí, soy una puta también,” she said. He was surprised that she referred to herself as such—not as a joke, but with pride”
* lots of “fun” new pronouns and not in the cool Le Guin way.
* and a genderless future utopia that's basically Brave New World, but glorified instead of cautionary
* x endings for Latinos a thousand years in the future (hermanix lol)
* over-emphasis on consent in “romantic” scenes. “She reviewed how many she'd made love to before her ai warned her she was unable to consent. Four!”
* hyper sex positivity. The main focus of the book is sex. Consensual sex is always good and nobody every gets hurt or jealous no matter what. On top of it all, the sex scenes are... embarrassingly bad. I was going to quote some but I can't bring myself to do it.
* strange obsession with justifying and explaining self-cutting
* weird incest that almost felt glorified in a Game of Thrones type way.

It's not even that I necessarily even oppose most of those agendas. I expected to be “challenged” by it and was hoping to learn from something different from my standard fare. The problem is that they're so overt, so omnipresent, and so distracting. For a book with no aliens, the characters all seem to be human adjacent, but not quite human. I was unable to finish it. It was a 19 hour audiobook and I bailed at 17 hours.

Ridgeline describes the fight between Capt. William Fetterman and the Sioux chief Crazy Horse at the base of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming.

Punke switches between the perspective of the settlers, soldiers, and the Sioux to great effect. I can't stop thinking about what it'd be like on one hand, to live in a small fort surrounded by people who want to kill you, or on the other, to have your entire way of life threatened by that same group of heavily armed people in the small fort.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as [b:George's Secret Key to the Universe 1111741 George's Secret Key to the Universe Lucy Hawking http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QUIjsfBJL.SL75.jpg 857108], but it wasn't bad. Max enjoyed it and, like the last one, it got him asking questions about planets, galaxies and science in general.My biggest complaint was that while there is some science interwoven throughout the story, which seems aimed at 7 to 11 year olds, the “real” science is isn't part of the main plot. It is separated into small sections that come in the middle of chapters and is written for a much more mature audience. I had to read them silently to myself then explain them to Max in terms he could understand to avoid having his eyes glaze over completely.So, even though the writing isn't stellar, the Cosmic Treasure Hunt accomplishes its purpose; it's entertaining for kids and gets them excited for further scientific inquiry.

This book is notable for its beautiful, creative, metaphorical descriptions of hummingbirds. The genius title of the book and the gorgeous cover art are just the beginning. Jon Dunn's love for these little birds is evident on every page. Each new species he encounters is a revelation and you can't help but feel enthusiastic along with him. The photography is very good. Also enjoyable were his historical notes about each hummingbird. He often has interesting anecdotes about their “discovery,” along with local lore.

This is the first dystopia I've read and it's one of the most influential books I've read. It's harrowing and prescient. It's also a great story.

In a perfect world I wouldn't have to read marketing books. I would create something useful, people would be drawn to it instinctively, they would offer me their equally useful creations and we would mutually thrive.

For the world we have, there is Mark Joyner.

The Irresistible Offer is a concise formula for effective marketing. It avoids moralizing and cross-promoting and lays out a guide for going from whatever you have now to a marketing approach that should help you attract good customers. It's available free online as a PDF (legally).

Edit: Just posted a full summary here: http://marcusvorwaller.com/blog/archives/2010/08/28/summary-of-the-irresistible-offer/ if you'd like the quick(er) version.

It is obvious that Henryk Sienkiewicz was an expert first century Rome. The city and the monarchy come alive in Quo Vadis in an amazingly tangible way. Even though not all the events are historically accurate, I don't see how a better job could be done of recreating the time and place. 

The description of the Roman circus with its gladiators and Christian massacres is the strongest section of the book. It is awful. I hadn't thought more than superficially about what went on in the ampitheatres but after reading this, it is clear to me that any complaining about how morals are worse now than ever can easily be answered by referring to the Romans. Two thousand years ago, shortly after the death of Christ, humanity had already plumbed the  depths of depravity.

How does a society get to the point where the slaughter and violation of women and children whose only crime is their religion is viewed as acceptable entertainment? Gladiators are vaguely comprehensible to me. I can see how a people that prizes strength and valor in war could come to idolize it to the point of recreating it artificially in games; it's sick but understandable. But when it comes to releasing men, women and children to be torn apart by animals while thousands of onlookers enjoy the spectical, it is hard to see how that can be justified in any context. It is strange that the famous philosophers and historians of Rome weren't more vocal in condemning the arena. Was life really so little valued? Are people really so easily blinded by their surroundings?

Outside the descriptions of damnatio ad bestias, Quo Vadis has its moments but it repeatedly comes close to greatness without ever really reaching it. The primary focus of the plot, the love story between Marcus Vinicius and Ligia, is melodramatic and sometimes so overdone that it is almost nauseating. At other times in the story there is compelling and real relationship there, but it is overshadowed by the prevailing sappiness.

Early Christians are portrayed as the embodiment of “turn the other cheek” and “lambs to the slaughter,” completely unwilling, even when able, to defend themselves. Maybe that's how they were, I don't know. Either way, it makes for a frustrating story.

Thinking about the book while writing this review makes me realize that Quo Vadis is impressive for the amount of information it conveys about Rome, Nero and the environment of early Christianity. Maybe it deserves another star, but I didn't read it for the history, I read it for the story and the story is definitely only 3 stars.

I'm probably not in the target audience for this book, but I still found it, especially the first half, to be a sobering look at the direction the US is moving in today. Dreher says we're heading closer to “soft totalitarianism.” A culture-driven (rather than government-driven) version of the same type of totalizing of ideas as the Soviet and Maoist regimes had.

There seemed to be an imbalance in the second half of the book when Dreher starts to recommend solutions. If we really are in such a dire state, is meeting together in discussion groups in passive solidarity really what's called for? It may be part of a solution but it seems... lacking.

I recommend this book, even for non-Christians. It sheds a lot of light on what is going on today with the ever contracting window of what's allowable to think and talk about and offers some good historical frameworks for how to think about it.

Sartor Resartus, which means “The Tailor Re-tailored” is ostensibly a book on “The Philosophy of Clothing” by a German author, Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. We're told that this is the English translation from the original German. But, this is much more than a translation. The translator feels that in order to make the book more accessible to his English audience, he should include copious commentary and background. In the end, not only do we get the the translation of the original along with the editor's commentary but we also get a biography of Teufelsdrockh assembled from the strange and seemingly random contents of six sealed paper bags which the editor has come into possession of, and which he plans to deposit later at the British Museum.

This is all great, except that Teufelsdrockh is fictional along with the German version of the book and the six paper bags. So it's a fictional translation by a fictional editor of a fictional book that turns out to actually be a rather hilarious semi-autobiograhical portrayal of Carlyle and his thoughts.

At times it's parody of Hegel, at other times it's religious and existential musings then later it's political and philosophical commentary. All that alone would be enough, but couple it with Carlyle's brobdingagian (big) vocabulary, his dream-like writing style and now obscure references to historical and contemporary (for him) events and you get a fascinating book that is unique in many ways.

I thought it was funny, insightful and memorable. I loved the writing style, and though it took me several months to read it, it was worth the effort. You can find it for free on Google Books, Gutenberg etc.

Here are a couple of existential quotations from the book:

Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,—till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day?

‘So bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in,' groaned he, ‘with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, I can neither see nor move: not my own am I, but the World's; and Time flies fast, and Heaven is high, and Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of Thought! Why not; what binds me here? Want, want!—Ha, of what?

A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, Know what thou canst work at.

I love books about the British nobility and their lives of luxury. Hunting and horseback riding and going for visits then going to the club, it's all so foreign and romantic. If that wasn't enough, Dorian Gray with his endlessly young face and the creepy, witty Lord Henry with his counter-intuitive morality made this book a great read. It's psychologically and morally challenging but at the same time a lush and witty page-turner.

For some reason I'm always hesitant to pick up Oscar Wilde's plays, but after 10 minutes of reading them, I can never put them down. There is all the typical satire in An Ideal Husband, but it's also beautiful and insightful.

I think there is definitely truth to the idea that “the universe bends to your will” but when you state it like that and wrap it up in so much metaphysical hype it makes even an idea as powerful as ‘the Secret' seem like quackery.

Continues to be relevant today, perhaps more than ever with the digital photography revolution well underway.

It's a fun read, about what you'd expect from a book called Old Man's War.

If this crypto-transhumanism is the best option to nihilism that philosophy can offer, we are in trouble. Just getting to the idea is painful enough with the pseudo-biblical literary style and the intentional obscuring of every important idea in strange, multidimensional metaphors. If however, you wade through all that, you'll need to be convinced that the will to power is every person's secret motivation and that the purpose of life is to create the overman/superman/übermensch as formulated by Nietzsche.

My main problem with the overman is that it's hard for me to grok what exactly he is. The only obvious traits are his overwhelming sense of pride and relative superiority to the weak and lesser evolved. The overman has no concern with an afterlife and prefers to live without regret and an acceptance of everything that happens, regardless of impact.

Those ideas seem to be in conflict though. Pride and superiority engender otherness from the majority of humanity. They are, at their core, anti-empathetic. With us humans being such intensely social creatures, I don't understand how glorifying those attributes is supposed to eventually lead to a life that you'd be happy repeating for eternity as Nietzsche suggests the overman should be cool with doing. When it comes down to it sure, an amoral lack of concern for lesser men is something that Nietzsche can successfully contrast with Christianity, but to what avail? Who does this benefit? Sociopaths?

Based on the non-negligble success Nietzsche's ideas have found, I have no doubt that there are more nuanced ways of interpreting this book, but this is what I got from my first reading of it and as it stands, I really can't ever see reading it again.

It's tough to find a book on psychedelics that doesn't come from an overtly biased perspective. Usually the author is someone who is a fanatical proponent of everyone trying psychedelics and/or someone who has maybe tried a few to many themselves. This book is a nice exception to that. Strassman is Buddhist and clearly has had positive experiences with psychedelics but only mentions his Buddhism towards the end of the book and never talks about his personal experiences with drugs.

Instead, Strassman offers a refreshingly level-headed report on his DMT studies.

This doesn't mean it's not weird. It's weird. Really weird.

I'm really not sure what to make of DMT. It's a chemical our bodies make. There's speculation that it's made in the center of the brain in the pineal gland and that it's released at birth and death. It's present in many other animals and plants. When it's smoked or injected, people have an extremely intense 12 to 15 minute trip in which they see and experience very strange and intense things. I guess that's not exactly revelatory and after reading 350 pages you'd expect that maybe I'd have something more profound to say. Well, not having used the drug, I have no personal insights to offer and I really do not know what to make of the experiences that people who have used it had.

They see humanoid or reptilian beings with whom they can interact. The beings are sometimes, but not always, friendly. At times they are mischievous or indifferent. Other times they are hostile. There is often a white light or white tunnel like you hear about in near death or alien abduction experiences. The visions are incredibly lucid— “more real than real” and they don't go away when the eyes are opened.

It seems that Strassman doesn't know what to think either. In the last chapter he makes some wild guesses about the meaning and origin of the visions, but no explanation is really satisfactory. He says “whenever I tried to react to being-contact sessions with anything I knew or believed previously, it just didn't work. I was stuck.”

Eventually, for a variety of reasons, he gave up the study of psychedelics. Prominent among them is that he could never say for sure that they have any definite benefit or that if they do, that the benefit can't be realized in the hospital setting he was confined to working under. Towards the end of the book he says “Now that this stage of my involvement with psychedelics is over, I don't necessarily feel they are as important as I once did, nor that I would want to do them myself.”

I couldn't take it. The first 20 pages were way too melodramatic. I'm sure there's an interesting story there but sheesh... just tell it.

It's too bad that the ending of this story is so well known, if the plot and ending hadn't been spoiled by the MPAA and society at large, the tension would have been incredible. Despite that, it was a fun book to read and still suspenseful. It's a quick read, it moves along fast like good movie and takes just a little longer than the time to watch a movie to read.

Here's some free advice from Stevenson:

I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.

Maybe a little pain and suffering is good after all. This book was so different from 1984, yet so similar. It's interesting how free love and the suppression of love can lead to basically the same end - when “everyone belongs to everyone else” nothing is sacred or worth fighting for, when nobody belongs to anybody, again, nothing is worth fighting for.

I couldn't help but notice the similarity between the axioms that came from speakers under the pillows of sleeping students in Brave New World and the giant Ministry of Public Thought at the disposal of the government today that we call the Public Education System. Both take advantage of the captive attention of students to deliver whatever messages that the state deems appropriate. This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but really, is it that far of a stretch? Public administrators working, not for their happiness, but for the happiness of everyone else. Of course there are exceptions and differences, but the parallels are there.

The book is completely relevant today. People are still willing to sacrifice liberty for the siren song of government-provided comfort and security, Brave New World is a great testament as to why that is such a bad, bad idea.

I didn't know anything about this book before I started reading it other than that it is one of those books that teenagers read in high school or their freshman year of college and it immediately becomes their favorite book EVAR! It changes their lives etc. etc. It's the [b:Atlas Shrugged 6849452 La Rebelión de Atlas Ayn Rand https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1266916443s/6849452.jpg 817219] of moody writers. That in and of itself made me a little hesitant and self-conscious to read it, being well beyond my teenage years and far from a moody writer. Finally though, it became unavoidable and I gave in and started.Holden Caulfield is a great character. He's a kid growing up and struggling with moving from being someone with a pretty apathetic view of adults and adulthood to becoming an adult himself. He narrates the events and thoughts of a couple days after he gets kicked out of his school for bad grades. His honesty about how he sees people is so blunt and unapologetic that I found it impossible not to identify with him and love him.Holden points out the stuff that nobody wants to admit. For example, when he remembers back to a roommate that had cheap suitcases but who tried to pass himself as having nice, expensive ones, Holden observes how hard it is for people from different social and economic strata to get along:The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs–if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. It's true. People care and they have a hard time not caring. It's not impossible, but it's hard, and that's sort of a crappy truth about humanity.Similarly, throughout his story, Holden observes that a lot of people are perverts, that good looking people are usually wrapped up in their looks, that there are a lot of base extortionists, superficial and violent people, and in general, that a lot of people live in, or create, what appear to be really depressing situations. Holden doesn't exempt even himself from these observations. He realizes that in a way, he's crazy too. He's moody, sometimes half-delusional and flighty and he often doesn't understand even his own motives.The beautiful part of the book is that at the same time that Holden has these feelings of hate and disgust for people, he recognizes the beauty of humanity, and far from writing off mankind, he realizes how important it is to him. He sees beauty in children, in nuns and in the downtrodden. Even the people that annoy him the most he misses once he's left and, in a way, he loves them too. So, after reading it, I don't think it belongs purely in the realm of moody teenagers. Holden is self-absorbed but he's at the somewhat frightening time of his life where the bleak view teenagers form of adulthood is quickly becoming their reality. It's a time when most Westerners are selfish, whether they want to admit it or not. Holden is not a lost cause though, he's honest and he's got character. He won't take advantage of people and he knows beauty when he sees it. For adults who are perhaps beyond that transitional stage in their lives, The Catcher in the Rye is a good, and sometimes hilarious, reminder of how it feels to grow up in a confusing world.

I thought the first book, [b:The Neddiad 63339 The Neddiad How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization Daniel Manus Pinkwater http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170616941s/63339.jpg 61513], was a little better but this one was a nice continuation. It's imaginative and fun. If you're thinking about getting it for your kids or reading it to them, I'd say it's at about a 9 year old level.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” -Shakespeare, Hamlet

There are mistakes in this book. Andy Ngo probably treats the right more generously than the left. Violence on the extreme right is a big problem in America. Andy Ngo was hit by a milkshake. Antifa means “anti-fascist” and fascism is bad.

All of the above is true. And, hold my beer, it's also true that Antifa is a violent, loosely-organized, nihilistic group that hates America and wants to destroy it and has and will continue use violence, actual violence against both people and property, to accomplish their mission.

See what I did there? More than one thing can be true at the same time! This happens to be a book about the left wing extremists. There are also books about right wing extremists. They both exist and are problems we need to deal with.

If you want to understand Antifa, you won't find a better first-hand source than Unmasked. If you want to know why you should understand Antifa, watch the news and look at the reporters standing in front of burning buildings while the text on the screen says “mostly peaceful.” There's obviously something wrong with that picture, that's a start. Believe your eyes.

Antifa is not about justice, freedom, or equality and it's not the type of group that pushes a country to be better.

I got about 350 pages in, then quit the book. For the time period it's set in (medieval times), the book has way, way too much profanity and graphic scenes... rape etc. Too bad that what seemed like a great story was ruined by superfluous lewdness.

There are so many potent scenes in the Brothers Karamazov it's hard to know where to even begin. One of my favorite parts was the dialog between the old man Karamazov and the Elder Zosima near the beginning of the book. Both argued so masterfully and with such humor that it was hard not to root for them both. I really didn't expect to find myself laughing out loud so much at anything by Dostoevsky.

A taste of the humor:

Blessed be the womb that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck–the paps especially. When you said just now, ‘Don't be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it all,' you pierced right through me by that remark, and read me to the core...If I had only been sure that every one would accept me as the kindest and wisest of men, oh, Lord, what a good man I should have been then! Teacher!” he fell suddenly on his knees, “what must I do to gain eternal life?”

It was difficult even now to decide whether he was joking or really moved.

Father Zossima, lifting his eyes, looked at him, and said with a smile:

“You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense enough: don't give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don't give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your taverns. If you can't close all, at least two or three. And, above all–don't lie.”

“And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist.' In thousands of agonies–I exist. I'm tormented on the rack–but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar–I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

“God preserve you, my dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness for a fault from a woman you love. From one you love especially, however greatly you may have been in fault. For a woman–devil only knows what to make of a woman! I know something about them, anyway. But try acknowledging you are in fault to a woman. Say, ‘I am sorry, forgive me,' and a shower of reproaches will follow! Nothing will make her forgive you simply and directly, she'll humble you to the dust, bring forward things that have never happened, recall everything, forget nothing, add something of her own, and only then forgive you. And even the best, the best of them do it. She'll scrape up all the scrapings and load them on your head. They are ready to flay you alive, I tell you, every one of them, all these angels without whom we cannot live!”

At this point it's obvious that climate change is as much a political issue as it is an environmental one. If that doesn't sound right, here's some proof. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize in Economics winner wrote a review of False Alarm for the New York Times. He's a smart guy who has written a bunch of books himself. Despite this, his review is dishonest and factually incorrect from beginning to end.

Here's Stiglitz's review: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/books/review/bjorn-lomborg-false-alarm-joseph-stiglitz.html
Here's Lomborg's response: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-york-times-stunningly-false-deceptive-hit-piece-preserve-lomborg/

This isn't petty bickering over decimals between well-intentioned writers with different priorities. It's also not legitimately divergent interpretations of the same data. I get that using an author's own rebuttal to a bad review to show how bad the review is is, by definition, biased. But read them both. There's no way that Stiglitz didn't know what he was doing. He was preaching to the choir, his very specific choir. He knows that most people who read his review will use it to justify not reading False Alarm and write Lomborg off as a climate denier or a quack or worse. Charitably, I suppose you could say that Stiglitz wanted to dismiss Lomborg's book because it could cause people who are already less inclined to worry about climate change to become even more complacent and, as a result, to do less to address the issue. In any case, it's a dishonest and politicized review by a respected economist and it's perfectly illustrative of how the discussion around climate change has devolved into something a non-expert can't possibly be expected to make sense of.

I'm only focusing on Stiglitz's review because of how well it shows why counterpoints like False Alarm are needed. Lomborg's premise is that “global warming is now being used, often explicitly, to advance broader causes in a partisan political environment that shapes the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and much of the world.” Stiglitz is the perfect example of that.

If you've gotten most of what you know about climate change from newspaper and magazine articles, you should read this book. Maybe even read it alongside a more alarmist take on climate change like The Uninhabited Earth. One thing will become clear–while there is a consensus on the reality of climate change and the need to address it, there is nothing even close to a consensus on the scope of the problem or the best way to solve it. False Alarm, if nothing else, puts that fact into perspective.