Matt
like a butterfly flapped its wings and so I took estrogen
Unknown Number is a short story that was originally published as mock-up text message screenshots through a Twitter thread and is, as of writing this review, now in the finals for a Hugo Award.
I stumbled over it by pure chance and it intrigued me to read that a literary text released via a social media platform like this made it so far in this fairly prestigious awards ceremony.
The original post of the story is still available here [ https://twitter.com/Azure_Husky/status/1420177933826732034?s=20&t=kTeU3GMTrLutK2MntHRZnA ] and as you can probably imagine, it's a quick read. Around 60 screenshots of fictional text messages chronicling a conversation between two people.
The concept is pretty clever and brings some good perspectives on gender identity and roads not taken. It's clear that this story reflects the experience of real people in a way and it does a good job at making it accessible to the reader.
In the Book it is not considered plenty when insects eat well. It's called plague. But how could we be punished when we are the punishment?
This was a revisiting of a book I read for the first time as a teenager. I absolutely adored it back then and used to call it one of my favorite books for years. As a huge bug fan and cockroach enthusiast, a crass story from the point of view of a cockroach colony inhabiting an apartment was an incredibly fun experience for me.
I had a feeling though that going back to it this many years later I would not have the same reaction to the book and I was right.
Again, the concept of writing a story from the point of view of a colony of Blattella Germanica, a common kind of roaches, trying to survive in an apartment that is going through some changes due to the relationships of the human tenant, is an incredibly fun one to me. The roach interactions are written very well for the most part with a lot of detail to their actual anatomy and way of living. Things like having the roaches get their names from the first thing they read after being born, many of them growing up from the glue in books and therefore having a personality imprinted on them from those texts, is a great idea and makes for a lot of entertaining brief character moments.
I also enjoyed how graphic some moments can be as some of the roaches have to endure some terrible things under the hand of the human tenant. There is a serious gore element to this book as roach deaths are described in a lot of detail and the bugs are imbued with enough personality to make it even harder to read at points.
It makes sense for a book about the life of ordinary cockroaches to be so grimy at many points. And a lot of these have been memorable to me. Some of them are wild like a moment where the protagonist roach comes across an aborted fetus in the sewers and has a cathartic beatdown, fed by his frustrations with humans at the time.
The unique protagonists are also used for some interesting and rather entertaining social commentary or exploration of human life. The differences between the autonomous and survival-driven cockroach and the more spontaneous and shame-driven human are commented on very frequently by the protagonist roach and can be pretty clever. There are thoughts and discussions between roaches on shallow beauty standards, hypocritical morals, questionable mating behavior, religion, and other things while observing their human adversaries.
Unfortunately, there are also attempts at racially charged commentary, which comes across as very heavy-handed, and together with the author's already odd focus on the ethnicities of characters and stereotypes, it makes for some uncomfortable and unnecessary pages. This is the side of this novel's crass nature that I cannot appreciate. Reading a white author create a stereotypical Afro-American living in the “ghetto” for example felt misguided, and having characters very often be reduced and called by their ethnicity throughout the book just seemed a bit strange.
Some of the graphic moments also go into very daring sexual territories; I wouldn't blame anyone to put down the book after reading those. This book certainly goes places.
This re-read really has been a conflicting experience through and through. Weiss' The Roaches Have No King undoubtedly has a general story concept that I absolutely love, and as long as the focus lies on the survival of and interaction between the roaches, I did enjoy this book greatly for the most part. But I cannot deny that Weiss' character writing is questionable at many points and his attempts at social commentary come across as pretty tone-deaf in some chapters.
I probably can't deny that reading it as a teenager added a lot to my still persisting love and fascination for bugs, which I appreciate. But this is definitely a flawed book with some extended ill-advised tangents.
I read this short picture book standing next to the public book shelf I saw it in and put it back after being done.
Definitely gotta take this with a grain of salt to enjoy this to any degree. Otherwise it's just gonna come across as preachy and reductive, of course. It's not super creative. I will admit though that one or two panels did give me just a slight chuckle.
You used to believe that with age you would become less unhappy, because you then would have reasons to be sad. When you were still young, your suffering was inconsolable because you believed it to be unfounded.
When I first read Édouard Levé's Suicide back in 2018, I wasn't quite sure what to take from it, even though I liked parts of it. Giving it a second shot this week left me with much of the same impression and I find it a bit difficult to find my own stance on this text though I definitely appreciate it.
It is odd to write about Édouard Levé's Suicide because without further context that could be either mentioning his novel or his actual death. The book is irreversibly linked with the author's unfortunate suicide that happened just days after he sent the manuscript to his publisher. Many interpretations of this short novel therefore theorize if this text might have been at least partially meant as his own personal suicide letter. Apparently, there is also a possibility that the text is in relation to the suicide of a friend that happened decades before.
The novel itself is a fictional text about a man that committed suicide and the book basically consists of a narrator recounting their thoughts and memories about that nameless man. One of the interesting things about this book is that it is written in second person singular. It is “you” who committed suicide, it is “you” that liked to stay inside so much, and it is “you” that the narrator remembers. It is also “you” who preferred books written by dead authors, published after their death, which is another line that puts more emphasis on the suicide of Levé himself and the post-mortem release of this very book, be it premeditated or not.
It's a unique writing style that I really like and definitely adds to the tone.
The book is also intentionally written like a string of unsorted thoughts. The narrator jumps from one memory to the next, from one observation and question to the next. It's actually a very quick and light read despite the heavy subject matter. It's a memoir for a person that doesn't exist through personal anecdotes and speculations about their mindset.
What I like about this book is the many individual sentences or paragraphs that put the nature of depression or existentialism into words. Many of them I found very authentic and I'm sure will seem relatable to many people who have thought about the end of life. It talks about how the death of a person seems to make up the whole narration of someone's life for the ones that outlive them or how much worse it can feel to be depressed without being able to determine an actual reason for those feelings. There are some clever observations here, put in words well.
I also liked learning about this person's life to a degree but this is where I felt a certain disconnect. The narrator mentions multiple times that “you” didn't like to travel or go outside, but there are also many lengthy stories about “you” spending time in different countries and exploring the locations. It doesn't really all fit together to me.
It also might just meander a bit too much about these subjects for my liking.
I think the book is often presented as being about someone trying to figure out the reason why “you” committed suicide and there are brief mentions near the beginning of a possible final message through an open comic book placed on a table before the character ended his life, but then was accidentally thrown off the table when the wife found the corpse, so no one ever knows for sure if that was meant to be some sort of a suicide note or not. But it's not much more than that. It's better to not go into this book expecting an answer to that question or even much of an investigation to begin with.
For a while, through the first few pages, I also thought the book was going to focus on how depression and suicidal tendencies can hide in the most mundane, unassuming lives, but that thread isn't followed much either.
There is no real line going through this book. It's a collection of thoughts without a conclusion and that certainly has its own effect, but it also makes the text seem somewhat aimless to me in certain regards. Which is one of the main reasons why I'm a bit ambivalent towards this book.
Levé's book is like a thought exercise in what a suicide might mean for the people surrounding it and an interesting contemplation about the wish to die, backed up by real-life circumstances that tie in too well into the fictional text. But it's also a book that, to me, rarely seems to follow a specific intention or aims at something to give more depth to this string of thoughts.
I still enjoyed reading it, I still find it very interesting as the book that it is, and I would still recommend it to anyone interested. It's a short and quick read that's easy to get through in one sitting, in my opinion. And it definitely does have some great sections.
What kind of shocks me about this book is that it never becomes melodramatic in any way. In fact, it doesn't even strike me as very emotional in general. It's a pretty sober and clearheaded read, which I probably didn't expect from a book bluntly titled Suicide and being written in the second person singular.
At one moment Levé writes something along the lines of
The desire to live can not be dictated.
This is data as you have never known it: This is data as therapy.
I want to learn about the world and I want to be aware of the many problems we are running into on a daily basis as the whole of humanity. But it is hard to keep a cool head and remain positive with the onslaught of cynical news and opinions in a time of fast information and highly connected technology. It always seems like the world is just getting worse and worse in a way.
So Rosling's Factfulness sounded like a very interesting and valuable book based on its premise. To use facts and data as proof that the world isn't as bad as we think it is and to alleviate some of that societal cynicism. I was very interested.
But I was also a bit skeptical at first. I was a bit afraid to be running into some guy re-arranging numbers and labels to make real-world problems sound less important or doing a dismissive “numbers don't care about your feelings” shtick which seems to be so popular these days. Luckily, the more I read, the clearer it was that this book is not just data but also filled with a lot of genuine humanity and acknowledgment of real problems in a realistic but also hopeful way.
The book isn't aiming to dismiss certain problems as being less important or not worth worrying about but rather shows statistics to correct certain common misinformation and attempts to add the context that is needed to realize that it's actually going up, not down. Yeah, there is still injustice in the world, wealth isn't spread ideally, climate change is definitely happening, and so on. But, as Rosling writes himself, it's important to remember that it can both be bad and better than it used to be. Acknowledging previous progress is important to keep us motivated to continue to work on these problems and not fall into a fatalistic mindset that everything is already doomed.
Rosling writes a lot about how to read information to prevent toxic assumptions or misinformation through missing context. Being aware of the imbalance between positive and negative stories in the news, simply due to the sensationalistic concept of journalism itself, for example. He talks about the unhelpful instinct to look for someone or something to blame when most problems are more complex than to be caused by a single element. He gives many notes on how to read information better to not lose your own mind.
Each chapter of the book is one tip to get away from that general negativity instinct that most of us have, each paired with a common negative assumption of the world we live in and its respective statistics. Besides the focus on data, Rosling writes in a very human and down-to-earth way. He also has many stories to tell from his personal work as a doctor and statistician, traveling the world all over, that make the text more engaging.
There are one or two little moments where I'm not quite on the same page as Rosling, but overall I found this book to be very informative and pretty charming. Rosling is clearly very passionate about the world we live in and he is even more passionate to spread his hopefulness and confidence for a better future with other people.
The fact that he worked on this book up until the very end of his life, still making notes and adjustments to the text while literally on his death bed, is also proof that this meant a lot to him.
While this book surely won't be a complete anxiety relief, it does provide a lot of very helpful ways to better deal with the daily news and do our part with less fear and worry.
In our daily social life, isolation manifests itself through universal, unwritten agreements to conceal our existential condition from one another.
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I stumbled over philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe recently during a late-night session of going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. The Last Messiah is the first of his texts that I've read now.
In this essay, Zapffe presents his position that humanity is suffering under its overdeveloped consciousness by making us too aware of the suffering and demise around us. He claims that modern life of humans has become a net of defense mechanisms because of that and pinpoints a few specific ways of how our society has established those in everyday life.
Zapffe was also a big proponent of antinatalism and so the final conclusion to his essay is that the titular metaphorical last messiah might come and urge people to stop procreation to prevent the cycle.
It's a really interesting point of view on life and a fascinating strain of fatalist philosophy to discuss. Parts of it remind me of my misanthropic teenage years when I was convinced of the same things, and that consciousness and intellectuality are the reason for most of humanity's suffering. I don't agree with the purely pessimistic, immature, and unchangeable attitude with which my younger self proposed those thoughts anymore, but there are still parts of that mindset that I do subscribe to, to a certain degree, and Zapffe manages to talk about them without putting all the fault into the corruption of mankind or anything like that. It doesn't seem like what he is writing has a hateful or malicious basis, and that is a bit of a fresh breeze considering the subject.
It makes it interesting to take apart.
Zapffe's essay is well written and even has a poetic sense to it at points which I liked. Many points he makes about certain “defense mechanisms” against misery are grounded in reality. I liked how he even is self-aware at a point when he describes how humans tend to work our sorrow in writings as one way to distance yourself from them, and so this very essay he writes could be an example of that as well.
He talks about isolation and how it became common courtesy to hide our personal sorrows from one another, and how the life of the high society is mostly made up of distractions because those became the things we value. Things like that. There is definitely a truth in many of these observations.
Whether or not the final conclusion to that should be antinatalism is a different conversation though, but, in a philosophical setting, it is an interesting one to have.
I really wish there were more of Zapff's texts that got translated. I'd love to read more.
On his mask-like face was a slight steady smile. Not because he felt especially well, but because in the face of oncoming death he mocked the world of the living.
I've read the first two books of Koji Suzuki's Ring series years ago and absolutely loved them. I grew a bit of an obsession with the entire Ring franchise rooting from having seen the American remake as a kid and then watching all the Japanese films, as well as reading those two aforementioned books.
But when I originally started the third novel back then, life got in the way and I didn't finish it. This week I picked up the book from my shelf and gave it a second, proper read, starting from the beginning.
The book started out pretty solid with some decent character exposition and a good set-up for the protagonist's goals and aspirations, also sprinkling in, as expected with this series, a bunch of interesting medical and science elements.
However, as we get closer to the final act and the main technological concept of this installment in the series becomes clearer, it ultimately takes an unexpected turn that establishes some new major information about everything that happened in the previous book and puts the entire story in a different, weird point of view. While I appreciate the attempt at adding some fairly high-concept science fiction elements, this one was at the same time so hamstrung that I wasn't really able to immerse myself very well, as well as retconning the stories of the previous two books in a way that didn't really work for me personally.
Loop is not a terrible book and I did enjoy at least half of it fairly well – as well as have a little bit of low-brow fun at the unexpected direction this ended up going in – but this is definitely the weakest book in the series for me so far and the first one I wouldn't recommend.
An enclosed, damp space sets the stage of horror.
Within the confines of this small space, the condition for rancor develops, matures with water and easily spreads. Traditionally, an old well is the perfect setting for ghost stories. But these days, wells are few and far between.
Not bad for a horror short originally released printed on toilet paper.
It's kind of funny that Suzuki begins the story by talking about water, a rotting curse, and a well, considering he wrote the infamous “Ring” novels. But there are no wells here. This story is set in a toilet stall and it's written in a way as if the protagonist was the reader.
It's a neat little thing but doesn't really become something very memorable aside from the toilet paper gimmick. It's a decent short with a fairly good idea but probably one of his weaker texts.
I also had to read an unofficial English translation, so I cannot really comment on his use of words here.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he felt a wave of despair. Everything was useless. Everything was pointless. My God, he thought, we can't do a thing! We can't stop it, we can't slow it down! No force in the world could contain this blight, he thought in horror. It's not because we do bad work. And it's not because they are more clever and cunning than we are. The world is just like that. Man is like that. If it wasn't the Visit, it would have been something else. Pigs always find mud.
I've heard of the Strugatsky's before but wasn't familiar with any of their work. I wouldn't even have read Roadside Picnic if it wasn't for a book club thing I spontaneously participated in. But I'm pretty glad I did decide to join that and I'm interested in reading other more fleshed-out novels by them now.
This book sets up a very interesting futuristic world that ages very well. None of its mystery and intrigue was lost over the 50 years since it was first conceived.
Even though it was a good read pretty much from the beginning and had me quite interested all the way through, a lot of the first half of the book left me wanting more because there are a lot of interesting things mentioned and thrown around in passing, but barely any immediate interaction or thorough exploration happens. Thankfully that thirst gets squelched pretty well in a later chapter.
My favorite part of the book however ended up being part 3 of the 4 chapters, which, through a perspective change to a different character, builds up a pretty fun almost crime/mystery subplot for a little bit and, more importantly, has a very lengthy scene of two characters theorizing and philosophizing about the world they live in and what the circumstances of the alien visit might have meant. That was very fun and very satisfying to read.
Roadside Picnic has some weaker spots including some more abrupt character actions that I didn't like too much, and it really seems like this whole thing only scratches the surface of the world that was created here, but it's a very fun read with some great, lengthy moments and a really intriguing setting.
I wasn't convinced that I was crazy, but I worried that I was. Some say, to have a conscious opinion about that subject is a sign for mental health but I'm not so sure.
I've seen the movie adaptation of “Girl, Interrupted” before, years ago, and I liked it a lot. Ever since then I wanted to read the source material. I have a soft spot for stories set in psychiatric hospitals anyway.
So, I borrowed this copy of the book from a friend and started reading in January of 2020. Funnily enough, when I began reading this book, I was at the tail end of a psychiatric stay myself.
I'm not sure what I expected from the book after already being familiar with the film, but I was a bit underwhelmed and after the first 100 pages, the book began to lie dormant on my shelf for about a year and a half. I finally picked it up again recently and finished it.
It was actually hard for me to see a lot of similarities between the movie and the book. They are both very different shades of media. The film is streamlined, dramatic, and has a clear thread. Kaysen's book however is more like a choppy collection of individual memories and impressions of her real stay at a clinic in the 60s.
It has some very interesting observations and some entertaining moments involving the other patients. But overall, it was quite repetitive and at points even a little bit annoying thanks to the adolescent characters, some of which very clearly like to be bitchy just for the sake of being bitchy and to mess around with the hospital staff. That sort of stuff can get grating for me personally.
I was also kind of mission the point at moments. I guess the main intention of this book is for Kaysen to chronicle her memories with 60s style therapy and coming to terms with what it means to have a mental illness including the stigmas. It does that pretty well at points, mainly in the beginning and end of the book, when it is the most reflective. But in-between, a lot of the text is rather mundane and doesn't hold that much for interest. There are fascinating little moments like the whole “where are my bones” breakdown, but there is also a lot of mundane chitchatting and bickering between the young adults here. There isn't much of a consistent storyline here, as the movie might have you believe.
So, I'm pretty conflicted about this book as a whole. It has value and I wouldn't say it's a bad piece of literature. Especially the final few pages where Kaysen dives into her actual diagnosis for the first time properly, was very interesting. There are also a few good bits and pieces about the relationship between patient and therapist, and even though this true story took place in the 60s where therapy was still pretty awful and very different from today, there are details here that still ring true to this day and that even I could find similarities to my own experiences with psychiatric hospitals.
Though I gotta say, I've read more interesting and better-structured books about first experiences with therapy and the isolated life in a clinic before, so this kind of pales in comparison. I got more out of Vizzini's “It's Kind Of A Funny Story”, for example. Which coincidentally is also based on the author's real experiences.
It's a decent book with some clear merits but I'm far from loving it. In my opinion, this is one of those rare cases where the movie adaptation is actually better.
I suppose what I'm saying is... I am okay. I survived my father. We all did – my brother, my mother and me – literally as well as figuratively. But as with all difficult things, it was a process.
Alan Cumming is an actor I've always liked seeing in films when he popped up. Be it “X-Men 2”, “Spy Kids” or even undisputable cinematic catastrophes like “Son of the Mask”, he always brings a lot of charm and character to his performances.
Over the last few years, I began to learn more about him and his other works in the entertainment industry outside of the movie scene, and it was pretty clear very early on that Cumming had a very varied life story. So, with that in mind, I decided to read his first memoir, “Not My Father's Son”.
“Not My Father's Son” is a very well-structured book about child abuse and how it can be to live up in a violent household. I'm sure a lot of people out there can sympathize with that, and I'm sure almost everyone can empathize with the situations Cumming recalls here. There are some very unflinching passages.
But besides all of that, this book manages to become a very multi-facetted story by jumping back and forth in time, re-telling parts of his childhood and contrasting that with the present of Cumming not only struggling with his late, estranged father but also managing to deal with some other family enlightenment as he takes part in the filming of an episode of a show that aims to research another enigmatic person in his family tree.
It comes together really well and it's almost astounding at moments how well the timing of the different parts of the real-life stories seems to be. It's also fascinating to watch the episode of that tv show after having read the book and seeing his genuine reactions on screen as a part of his family's history unravels before him, and it absolutely matches what he wrote in this memoir of his experiences on set during filming.
Alan Cumming's first memoir is a shocking and heavy text in many moments, but it's also very hopeful and ultimately a story of empowerment and growth. I like to read biographies and memoirs of people in show business in general, but I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Cumming's outing here. It ended up surpassing my expectations and I was pretty glued to the pages, especially during the second half of it.
It's written in a way that feels very brisk without ever breezing over heavier or emotional moments. It's very well-paced and Cumming has a very charming, easy-to-read writing style.
I would absolutely recommend this book wholeheartedly to people who might have had a violent childhood themselves and struggled with finding themselves long afterward. I would also recommend this book to people who are just generally interested in the meaning of a father role in one's life, the search of belonging somewhere, and our connection to family members that we never actually met.
I decided to read the most disgusting, dustiest, stained book that I had on my shelf for years now. I don't remember when or why I originally got it, but I know that I often thought about just throwing it out over the years because of the bad condition it was in. My copy of this novel was printed in 1960 and it seemed like it must have spent most of its 61 years of existence in a dirty, moldy basement somewhere.
While googling around a bit, trying to figure out where this book might have come from, I learned that during the division in West Germany you could collect your lottery ticket receipts and exchange them for a handful of books. This being of one of them. And somehow, over 60 years, it made it from shelf to shelf until it finally ended up with me.
Anyway, Autodiebe (transl.: Car Thieves) by Heiner Rank is a rather short crime story about a cop investigating the murder of his partner which eventually leads him to a circle of car thieves, as the title suggests.
It's a pretty light read. It has a few neat characters and it was pretty fun. Nothing fancy, nothing special. Probably nothing I'd remember for long, but I'm glad I finally read this book after all and it didn't just rot away on my shelf for the past few years for nothing.
Nevertheless, this old copy is going into the recycling bin immediately because it's just too far gone to keep or give away. I don't think anyone wants to read a book that makes them want to wash their hands after reading in fear of getting pink eye.
Ich bin mir nicht sicher, was ich von dem Buch halten soll. Es ist wie ein Ratgeber geschrieben mit dem Ziel ein pathologischer Narzisst zu werden. Dementsprechend fordert es den Leser wortwörtlich dazu auf egoistischer zu werden, andere zu manipulieren und allgemein einfach ein toxischer Mensch mit Doppelmoral zu sein. An einer Stelle wird sogar empfohlen, dass man Menschen, die einen ärgern mit dem Tod drohen soll.
Ich gehe davon aus, dass das des Autors Art von Humor ist und die ganze Sache unterhaltsamer für den Leser machen soll. Persönlich fehlte mir da aber die Pointe die aus den blanken Aussagen auch tatsächlich Humor macht. Oder war der Sinn des Buches bereits narzisstisch veranlagten Menschen aufzuzeigen, wie toxisch sie selber sind ohne sie direkt anzugreifen? Ich bin mir nicht sicher. Es kam mir jedenfalls recht herablassend vor.
Interessanterweise gibt es ein einziges Kapitel, in dem der Autor seinen Charakter bricht und dazu auffordert nicht den Schritten zum Narzissten zu folgen. Dieses Kapitel handelte von der Erziehung und dem Umgang mit Kindern. Ich gehe davon aus, dass der Autor damit sicher gehen will, dass Leute, die das Buch wirklich für voll und wörtlich nehmen nicht ihre eigenen Kinder darunter leiden lassen.
Ebenfalls finde ich es sehr schade, dass in diesem Buch nur zwei der eigentlich drei Narzissten-Typen laut Autor Rainer Sachse besprochen werden: Der erfolgreiche und der erfolglose Narzisst.
Wer also auf Informationen über den sogenannten gescheiterten Narzisst sucht, ist hier völlig falsch und es stärkt auch den Stereotyp oder das Stigma, dass ein Narzisst in jedem Fall ein selbstverliebter Egoist ist, was beim ausgelassenen, gescheiterten Narzisst eben nicht der Fall ist.
Für Leute, die unter der toxischen Art eines Narzissten in ihrer Umfeld leiden, könnte dieses Buch eventuell hilfreich sein diese Person etwas besser zu verstehen.
Für Menschen, die selber narzisstisch veranlagt sind könnte dieses Buch eventuell hilfreich dabei sein die Gründe für seine eigenen Wesenszüge zu erkennen, aber ich befürchte, dass die Präsentation sehr schnell auch missverstanden werden kann.
Ob es dem Leser verhelfen kann eine gesunde Portion Narzissmus anzutrainieren, wie manche es sagen, finde ich fragwürdig.
I picked this out spontaneously when I was at the library looking for psychology books about narcissism. This book isn't necessarily about that or about gifted children like the title suggests. It's more of an essay collection by psychologist Alice Miller about how childhood (especially child abuse) effects the mental health of the person growing up.
Because it is an essay collection it is not structured as well as a medical book. But at the same time the prose is rather dry and there are a ton of neverending multi-clause sentences, at least in the German version.
But it did have interesting parts for sure. I especially enjoyed the peeks behind the curtain of the relationship between therapist and their patient. How the therapist's childhood can affect how they treat their patients consciously or unconsciously. In that regard Miller has an interesting viewpoint that is not written about that often I feel like.
A pretty neat overview of all the different aspects of sleep and insomnia. Pretty much every chapter is only two pages long and condensed to the essential facts.
If you read other books about sleep you probably already knew most of this but it's a good little book for people who are new to the subject or want a little helping guide to know what they can do to improve their nightly sleep.
I read this book after my therapist suggested I read up on the subject matter because she proposed the idea that I'm on the weaker side of narcissism. I wasn't quite sure what she meant and I really disliked being connected to the word ‘narcissism' because I sure don't have a high view of myself or want to be something special.
I'm glad Dr. Craig Melkin made it clearer to me where I stand. His narcissism scale makes sense to me and I immediately expected I would belong on the left side of that being what he calls an echoist and the test provided in this book confirmed that.
So I was very interested in everything concerning the echoist side of narcissism. Unfortunately there is way more to say about the opposite, better known side of narcissism and how to deal with that in several situations so I didn't get as much out of this book as I was hoping to.
I'm also a bit skeptical about some of Malkin's suggestion as to how to deal with extreme narcissists at the work place and in relationships. Also the way he writes about the world of work spaces makes it seem very dystopian. Maybe that's just the American way of how things are over there.
I also would have liked the chapter about social media to be longer.
Malkin's book definitely has very interesting things to say but unfortunately it is rather lopsided as it presents a whole spectrum but mostly focuses on one end of it.
For people who need help dealing with a classic narcissist in their life I'm sure this is worth a shot.
Irgendwie habe ich mit diesem Buch etwas abgeschlossen. So fühlt es sich an. Als hätte ich als Kind meinem erwachsenen Selbst unbewusst eine Aufgabe gegeben, die ich hiermit erledigt habe. Und dass das Buch – von dem ich bis heute nicht wusste, wovon es handelt – teilweise so für mein Leben relevante Themen behandelt finde ich schon erstaunlich.
Der Titel war für mein Kind-Ich. Der Inhalt für mein Erwachsenen-Ich.
Meine komplette Rezension auf Literaturschock: https://literaturschock.de/literaturforum/index.php/topic,45919.msg975269.html#new
Meine Fresse.... was für ein Buch...
Ich persönlich würde es ja nicht unter Fach- und Sachbücher einsortieren. Nichts was in diesem Buch drin steht ist irgendwie sachlich oder rational.
Das Buch besteht einfach aus den gesammelten Spinnereien eines zutiefst überzeugten Christen über das Böse in der Zeichentrickserie und Videospielreihe “Pokémon”.
Für die, die es nicht Wissen, Pokémon handelt von einer Welt, in der die namensgebenden Pokémon leben, die unsere Tiere ersetzen. Mit sogenannten Pokébällen ist es möglich diese Lebewesen zu fangen und als Haustiere und/oder Arbeitstiere zu halten. Außerdem ist das tatsächliche Hauptthema des Franchises das Trainieren der Pokémon um sie gegen die Pokémon anderer Leute kämpfen zu lassen. Trainiert man sie gut genug, können sie sich auch “entwickeln” und werden zu noch stärkeren Pokémon. Der Traum jeden Kindes in dieser Welt und die Hauptaufgabe in den Videospielen ist es durch die Welt zu reisen, Pokémon zu sammeln und zu trainieren und dann die 8 Pokémon Arenen zu besuchen, in denen man den sogenannten Arenaleiter besiegen muss, um den entsprechenden Orden zu erhalten. Hat man alle 8, kann man gegen die Pokémon Liga - Also die 5 besten Trainer der Welt - antreten und versuchen Pokémon Meister zu werden.
Man kann sich jetzt darüber streiten, wie kindergerecht die ganze Sache ist in Hinsicht darauf, dass man hier arme kleine Tiere gefangenhält und gegeneinander kämpfen lässt. Aber es ist ja nun mal mehr als das. In der Zeichentrichserie bauen die Charaktere tiefgehende Beziehungen mit ihren Pokémon auf und nicht alle benutzen ihre Pokémon als Kampfmaschinen. Manche Leute wollen sie wie gesagt auch einfach nur als Haustier halten oder richten sie ab, damit sie ihm bei der Arbeit helfen.
Pokémon ist vorallem heutzutage ein ziemlich taktisches Spiel und speziell für Kinder mit seiner großen Vielfalt an Kreaturen sehr interessant. Außerdem geht es schon längst nicht mehr nur ums Kämpfen. Aber als dieses Buch erschienen war, gab es erst nur die ersten 3 Spiele, die in dem Sinne natürlich noch relativ ernüchternd waren.
Der Autor dieses Buches, John Paul Jackson ist hundertprozentig davon überzeugt, dass Pokémon eine Täuschung Satans ist, um die Kinder gegen das Christentum aufzuhetzen und sie dazu bringen, gefallen an okkulten Ritualen zu finden.
Außerdem, wie er selbst schrieb, lehrt Pokémon den Kindern die Evolution, was Jackson absolut nicht tolerieren kann.
Ganz Recht, John Paul Jackson ist so weit von seiner Religion überzeugt, dass er die Evolutionstheorie komplett abstreitet und noch schlimmer: Für ihn sind sämtliche anderen Religionen das pure Böse. So kommt es einen jedenfalls vor.
Ein Beispiel, wieso Pokémon denn so böse sein soll, ist eine Szene aus der Serie. Ein Geistpokémon mit Vampirzähnen erschreckt die Hauptfiguren. Als Antwort darauf suchen die sich darauf Kruzifix, Knoblauch und einem hölzernen Pfahl um das Geisterpokémon in die Flucht zu schlagen, wie man es so kennt. Als das Geisterpokémon dann die drei Dinge sieht, lacht es nur.
Jackson interpretiert das so, dass der Geist das Kruzifix - und damit das größte Zeichen des Christentums - auslacht und sieht es als Verhöhnung des Christentums. Daraus zieht er sich dann die Nachricht, dass das Kruzifix in der Pokémonwelt für Schwäche steht.
Er sieht das alles viel zu eng. Der Geist lachte einfach, weil die Sache mit dem Kruzifix, dem Knoblauch und dem Pfahl ein Klischee alter Vampirgeschichten ist, nicht um das Christentum niederzumachen. Das “lustige” ist, im Verlaufe des Buches schrieb Jackson noch davon, dass manche Leute die Nachrichten aus der Bibel falsch interpretieren...
Ich habe mich auch vom Christentum entfernt und bin Atheist geworden aber Gott weiß, dass ich bei dieser Entscheidung kein einziges mal an Pokémon gedacht habe.
Was mich sehr aufgeregt hat ist, dass Jackson sich nicht mal richtig über das, was er doch als ach so böse darstellt informiert hat. Wie ich schon sagte, geht es bei Pokémon darum, die gleichnamigen Tiere zu fangen und sie zum Kämpfen zu trainieren. Was Jackson wohl nicht ganz verstanden hat ist, dass man sich selber aber nicht mit den Pokémon identifiziert. Man ist ein normaler Mensch, der seinen Pokémon Kommandos zuruft.
In einem Kapitel schreibt Jackson nämlich, dass Ash (Also die Hauptfigur der Serie) sich in das Pokémon namens “Dodrio” verwandeln könnte, was absoluter Schwachsinn ist. Und es kommt noch besser: Im Anschluss darauf schreibt er, dass Ash auf diese Weise zu einem sogenannten “Pokégott” werden kann.
Man kann sich weder in Pokémon verwandeln, noch gibt es Pokégötter. Es gibt legendäre Pokémon, manche sind vielleicht gottähnlich, wie zum Beispiel die drei Vogelpokémon “Zapdos”, “Arktos” und “Lavados” die darauf aufpassen, dass die Elemente der Welt nicht außer Kontrolle geraten, aber sie sind keine Götter.
Und erst recht kann man selber sich nicht in ein Pokémon verwandeln und zu einem Gott werden. Ich verstehe jetzt noch nicht, wie Jackson auf diese bescheuerte Idee gekommen ist und werde es wohl nie verstehen.
Da Jackson uns davon überzeugen möchte, dass Pokémon den Kindern Hexerei und Okkultismus nahe bringt, zeigt er uns natürlich auch wie. Zum Beispiel schreibt er, dass den Kindern durch die Spiele/Serie das “Charming” oder auch die Zauberei durch Sprechgesänge beigebracht wird. Er kommt auf diese Idee, weil alle Pokémon (bis auf 1 oder 2 Ausnahmen) nichts weiter sagen können, als ihren eigenen Namen. Demnach klingt es schon mal nach “Sprechgesang”.
Aber ganz ehrlich, aus solchen banalen Sachen so einen Unsinn zu interpretieren ist lächerlich.
John Paul Jackson ist ein Quacksalber, der versucht aus einer eigentlich harmlosen Kinderunterhaltung Satan selbst zu machen in dem er aus den banalsten Dingen Schwachsinn interpretiert oder sich durch falsches Wissen selbst Stumpfsinn zusammenreimt.
Noch dazu, wie kann ich jemanden wie ihn und seine Meinung tolerieren, wenn er selber doch taktlos über die anderen Religionen der Welt herzieht.
Es erinnert mich ein wenig an PETA's aktuellem Vorgehen gegen die Super Mario Spiele, weil die titelgebende Hauptfigur als Power-Up, also um sich zu stärken, ein Waschbär-Outfit einsammeln kann. Es ist nur ein verdammtes Kinderspiel und man sollte es wirklich nicht so ernst nehmen.
Ich hoffe wirklich niemand liest dieses Buch und nimmt es zu ernst. John Paul Jackson ist viel zu sehr in seiner Religion gefangen, dass er die Realität gar nicht mehr sieht. Er ähnelt den Hexenjägern des Mittelalters und sollte sich dringend ein wenig von seinem Glauben entfernen. Ich habe auch gläubige Freunde und ich toleriere deren Meinung und Glauben, aber wenn es schon so weit ist, dass man Satan in Kinderspielen findet und selbst so was wie die Evolutionstheorie abstreitet, geht es meiner Meinung nach entschieden zu weit. Man sollte schon darauf achten, sich nicht zu sehr in der Vergangenheit zu fangen.
Pokémon ist vielleicht nicht ganz so harmlos wie ich denke, immerhin geht es größtenteils darum, Tiere zu fangen und für sich kämpfen zu lassen, aber Jackson hat mit seinen idiotischen Gründen definitiv übertrieben.
Dieses Buch erhält von mir 1 Stern, weil weniger nicht geht.
Definitiv das bescheuerteste Buch, das ich je gelesen habe.