Michael Mullins
This is less the Marie Antoinette diet and more the Karen Wheeler diet. Wheeler starts with a valid premise: the French are slim and relatively healthy (certainly compared to Americans), so we should do what they do, but then she starts ‘improving' things.One of the original books advocating French eating (or at least one of the first I encountered) is [b:The Fat Fallacy : Applying the French Diet to the American Lifestyle 3318694 The Fat Fallacy Applying the French Diet to the American Lifestyle William Clower https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1267932149l/3318694.SX50.jpg 3356447]. Start there if you like. There are dozens of other books along more or less the same line. Where these books say, this is what the French do, do it the same way, then follow those books. Where these books say, yes, but we know better, so instead do this — ignore that advice. All of these books have value, but you have to separate out the increasingly ancient wisdom of how the French eat to how a particular author believes they can improve on this ancient wisdom.All of this is not to say that the French way of eating is the healthiest, but you will lose weight, especially if you can get behind four principles of French eating:1. Eat only the highest quality, most natural ingredients.2. Proper portion sizes are much smaller than you think. Check out what a typical portion size would have been in the 1950s — this is a good guide.3. Eat mindfully, slowly, and without distraction.4. Don't snack. A meal begins. It ends. You're done. We're not cows and we do not need to graze. (Do you really want the bulbous cow to be your model?)There is more to it, fine detail and subtleties, but these four get you to 80%.There's no clear way to rate this book. It's a mixed bag. Further complicating things is the fact that although Marie Antoinette was French, to be sure, she did live in the 18th century. Evolution in the French diet has naturally occurred. To add potential injury to insult, understand that although a person eating a typical American diet will almost certainly improve their health and reduce their size by mimicking the French way of eating, there are healthier ways of eating. Myself, I cycle through a number of paradigms, depending on intuition and current need. If you want to be slimmer, the French have your pass at the ready, but if you want to be healthier you're going to need to maybe start here and then invest in a much more nuanced nutritional education.
Sprinkled throughout the book were listed recommended brands, by name, and links to those products. That means that this is no longer a health book but sponsored content, and thus completely and immediately discredited. Who is to say whether claims made in the book were made because the science backs them up or because the claims would lead unsuspecting readers to buy the products listed.
If the authors are going to write a book intended to help people, then they must in future avoid any whiff of partiality when it comes to specific products. Even this doesn't ensure the purity of the information provided. An author who owns a food company or has a stake in such a company, for instance, is pretty much disqualified from writing such a book and having it taken seriously.
People are tired of their health being sacrificed at the altar of capitalism.
I'm ashamed to admit I spent more time than I should have figuring just how Reversalism would work. (Conclusion: It wouldn't.) In the book Reversalism is an economic system supported by the Prime Minister (not quite himself of late) in which the economy would flow backwards. One paid one's employer for hours worked and then received compensation for shopping, the whole system rounded out by penalization for the accumulation of wealth. The origins for this literary device lie in the novella's other literary device, his homage to Kafka:
He was beginning to understand that by a grotesque reversal his vulnerable flesh now lay outside his skeleton...
The Children Act
It's a good book about people who drink the tainted Kool-Aid of radicalized Christian extremism. Unfortunately it's written by someone also drinking the Kool-Aid, if from a less tainted batch. We just call such a person a Christian. In other words, the problem Alberta is trying to dissect and solve from within Christianity is, in my opinion, a problem inherent in religious belief, only solvable from without. Religion is defined by faith and faith is defined by a belief in something for which there is no basis for that belief. The rest of us call that delusion, and the delusion of Bible-thumping, mouth-frothing Trump supporters is different from run of the mill religious delusion only in degree and not in kind. The notion that people are going to believe they possess the unerring word of God and not eventually fall into an egoic craziness, a trance which leads inexorably to places like Jan. 6 — that notion is itself a delusion. We can roll back time, scanning history, and see example after example of just this sort of thing playing out. When the religious say that absence of proof is not proof of absence (something which is true in a general sense but unhelpful for finding truth) they are opening the door for behavior based not on intelligence and logic, but on hope, a need to feel safe and taken care of (‘saved' in the language of the evangelicals). Nothing is more uncomfortable for a societal animal to continually take illogical action when the group does not support that action. And nothing is more uncomfortable for a group taking such action when the society it's part of doesn't support that action. This is the place we find ourselves and it's the reason that the Religious Right is now so desperately interfering in what is correctly secular politics. To highjack a phrase (somewhat ironically) from David Mamet: they are attempting to correct for a raging internal imbalance. (In the original Mamet was referring to writers, also at the best of times not the sanest lot. But that's a different book, a different review.) ‘Cognitive dissonance' is the general psychological term for all of this. Those suffering will stop at nothing to right the balance. It really is a dissonance of belief. They believe that their actions are logical, and yet they ‘believe' this other thing which is inherently illogical and leads to illogical actions. What's more, they're being reminded of it constantly by the society they live in, either explicitly or by comparison.
This is a book worth reading if you are capable of separating the author's own faith out of the larger story he's telling, the story of the modern extreme radicalization and politicization of Christianity. It is a mistake, however, to think that American Christianity was somehow sane and healthy before this modern variant began to take hold. The core belief system is unstable and unhealthy at the core.
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory is an example of books that need to be written. (They need to be read as well, but the functional illiteracy of the American public is beyond the scope of things being discussed here.) These books need to be written from without, though. With Albert I fear we have a case of the fox guarding the henhouse. Secularism needs to take a serious look at the accumulative power of the religious in our modern, secular, pluralist society. Secularism then needs to take steps to corral and diminish that power until it no longer poses the threat that it currently does.
Surprisingly compelling prose in a book I read just for completeness and because, you know, reading is what I do. Like many I've been reading King since adolescence, and although I've largely outgrown him as a reader and as an increasingly serious writer myself — serious is how I take the task and not necessary how I write — I'm on dedicated path to read everything the man has written, if only because I can. And even when the prose groans the man still knows how to tell a story. As of finishing Nightmares in the Sky — and according to the spreadsheet I'm staring at — I'm 67.1% finished with King's current oeuvre by total number of books and 65.7% done by total words written. (If you think I don't keep track you're crazy.) I didn't expect to particularly enjoy the book. As I said, it was a chore, a check mark on a list, insomuch as reading can be a chore or just an item on a list. As is often the case, however, the book we expect and the book we receive are different beasts, and in this case a collection of beasts, which “alternately grinned and leered, sobbed and smirked, snarled and cringed”, these gargoyles of New York City. I'll stop now lest the review become larger than the essay which inspired it.
It's hard to actually place this book in terms of overall quality. The author is certainly on the right track and largely eschews dogma though the scent of the dogmatic is in the air. (The smell of wet dogma?) Moreover, my extensive reading with admittedly popular nutrition convinces me that he's operating from a limited perspective. This is an earlier book and if memory serves Fuhrman eventually begins strongly advocating for intermittent fasting, so I think his thinking becomes broader and to my mind better aligned with truth, which for nutritional science, is a very hard nut to crack indeed. Our bodies are a miracle of infinite complexities and any declaration of how they behave needs to be tempered with a healthy portion of humility. Lastly, the facts have changed somewhat since the writing of this book. (Which is to say that either the situation has changed or our understanding has changed — facts, of course, don't actually themselves change.) Specifically the prevalence of trans fats in the food supply has significantly diminished due to federal regulation. Mark one small win in a sea of losses for the American eater.
There are some books that teach us nothing more so than we just don't care. The Ode Less Travelled — witty, well-written, wonderful as Stephen Fry is and does — taught me that I care not a ounce about poetic form, my eyes glazing over with the mention of each passing form and the rules which bind those forms. It's not that I don't like poetry. I have been moved by poetry, though not nearly as often as I've been moved by prose. I've even written some poetry in my day, though of the dreaded free verse variety which poets of a certain ilk disdain. Writing for me is about giving rise to creative impulse, at the best of times born of fiery imagination, lighted by genuine inspiration. For whatever reason, formality as described here seems to extinguish that flame before it has begun.
I can read Shakespeare and experience deeply the genius without needing to analyze any poetic mechanics the man may have used. For me the thought and language driving the plays is sufficient. (Shakespeare was no stranger to prose himself.) In much the same way I can write music without needed to consult the underlying musical theory of what I'm writing. In the case of music, I know the theory, but having learned it, I forget it. Experienced intuition can dazzle as much or more than formal structure. As for the theory of poetry, I'd just rather not bother. Structure, apparently, is something I create myself or do without altogether.
We read books with many different facilities: our intellect, imaginations, past learning, powers of deduction, powers of debate... We reread books often with at least one more facility: our memories. Books reread are colored by the past, colors growing more vibrant and nostalgic when the distance between reading and rereading is measured in decades. The Ralph S. Mouse books form a bold memory in my imagination. These were my favorite books as a child. My greatest impression now is the belief that there's nothing here that doesn't hold up. A kid picking up the books today cold relate completely to the plucky little mouse and his red motorcycle.
Easily one of the best books I've read in the past five years. McKibben's facts are in order, but he can also tell a story, and story is one of the things we need in order to change hearts and minds. I think if I was granted to the power to make every conservative (and for that matter every liberal) understand one set of facts, one perspective, it would be the worldview laid out here. Deeply political, deeply felt, deeply if comfortably holistic, the message here is so important that our collective existence hinges on our understanding, and yet I'm not sure how optimistic I am that we will get there in the end.
Well. OK. But now I need a shower.
An obviously well-written, well-researched treatise on the alarming rise of hate groups in the modern era, I kept wondering if knowing the difference between factions of hate is really the point. Of course it is right to draw clear maps of such phenomena and define carefully the landscape, but at what point do we simply call crazy and delusional out for being just that? Knowing the difference between the eponymous Proud Boys and Neo-Nazis doesn't hurt, but at some point we have to start lumping rather than splitting, and then begin the process of dealing with those we have unfortunately if accurately lumped under the heading of crazy and delusional. Ultimately this all involves questions of freedom of speech, of assembly, of the right to bear arms. Do we, as a free people, need to curtail the rights of citizens to transgress too far over certain lines? (Of course we do. We do it all the time. But by how much and in what direction do we curtail? And who does the curtailing?) Germany postwar bans the use of Nazi symbols under certain circumstances. Even more of a reach is Germany's ban on publicly denying the Holocaust. And yes, the fact that Germany now represents the sanity to which we need to strive should give us all pause.
In a final tacked on chapter — Decoding and Derailing White Nationalist Discourse — Stern seems to be pointing to what she believes is solution, but it is so underwhelming in the face of the absolute horror that she has laid out up to that point as to be laughable:
My hope is that by dismantling and disassembling alt-right ideas, and scrutinizing their flawed logics and bigoted assumptions, we will be better able to defuse and short-circuit them.
interrogate and disassemble [the alt-right's] metaphors and language, and remain mindful of the perfidious implications of concepts such as the ethnostate and white genocide.
The temptation with a character like Musk would be to color the man by recent actions, and this is just what Isaacson avoids. Musk's mad dash from left to right, from empathic to near sociopathic, leaves many flummoxed. Heraclitus said that character is destiny, and while I have problems with this particular philosophy (I would argue that action is destiny and than a person can — as many have — overcome character to act well and in accords with greatness), this idea does seem to be playing out right on course for Musk. Upon finishing the book I thought I had an understanding of why Musk does the things he does, and this is about the best cover copy a biography could want. None of this is to say that I agree with Musk's principles or the conclusions he reaches as a result of holding those principles — it simply means that I believe Musk is in fact a man living out his principles. He is a flawed human. Of course. Some of us are more flawed than others and Musk is pretty high on that chart most days. The problem with a society that imbues individuals with this much money, unchecked, is that the wealth comes with commensurate power. As such, Musk's flaws and mistakes are magnified many times over. I've often thought that this was what money actually was: a magnifier. A charitable poor person will be, upon becoming rich, a more charitable person. A poor miser will make an even more miserly rich person. Anger, humility, creativity, loving kindness, sociopathy, saintliness — all of these things become magnified through the lens of an increased bank account. Musk has achieved a wealth to rival entire nation states and so his foibles and his gifts are on display, equally magnified, playing out before us in real time. I don't know how his story is eventually going to play out. Neither do you. I am curious to find out. All or most of Isaacson's subjects are dead by the time he writes their stories, so I'm left to wonder if the author won't be doing a follow up as Musk's game moves into extra innings. What is obvious is that the final chapter has not been written, and that whether it's Isaacson that writes it or someone else, I would not feel confident judging Musk as a net positive or net negative force for human affairs and history based solely on this necessarily incomplete history of the man. What I can say is that Musk will likely continue to be a force acting out and acting upon us all in some form or fashion for the foreseeable future.
I'm beginning to suspect that the best approach to learning history is in these fairly hefty chunks. The entirety of world history is just too big to be written about effectively in a single volume, whereas microscopic histories limited to a single people at a single place or of a single event are just too myopic at first. Kershaw's The Global Age: Europe, 1950-2017 (also called Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017) is the final volume in the nine volumes listed in the Penguin History of Europe Series. This is one of those books which makes you feel smarter than you are, if you know what I mean. Kershaw's approach, in texture and language, reminded me quite a bit of Diarmaid Macculloch's Christianity: the First Three Thousand Years, a book I need to return to and finish. Maybe you have to be in the right headspace, but a detailed knowledge of a subject which continues to play out against our daily lives, affecting us in small and big ways, is a handy thing to have.
Obviously a master of his subject, the author writes well. The book has me thirsting for more.
More a litany than an exhaustive inquiry into the evolution of free speech as defined and refined by the Supreme Court of the United States. Such a subject would be just as worthy of a 2500-page tome authored by William T. Vollmann (and what a glory such a thing may be) than what is presented here, which is good but feels abbreviated. It's naturally a huge subject, and a history of the protection of speech extending not just to the American experiment but as it applies throughout world history would have been welcome. My guess is that the ancient Greeks may have a word or two to say. Still, the book is well done and smart. I just wish it were longer.
[Note: I quote at some length from both Floating Twigs: A Boy, a Dog, and the Power of Love by Charles Tabb and from Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. I don't know if this equates in any way to spoilers, so I will simply say, “Enter at your own risk....”]
I read Floating Twigs on the heels of reading Young Mungo. Although it would be inaccurate to say that the two novels cover roughly the same ground, they certainly both tread similar waters: impoverished childhoods, the rough world of toxic masculinity, violence meted out at the hands of and upon the tender bodies of the young, fear and accusations of molestation, all of it played against a fabric of genuine, masculine love, of men or boys caring for one another. The contrast of encountering these two stories so close together could not have been more stark. Compare:
(An excerpt from Floating Twigs:)
“You're right about that, at least,” said Tommy. He looked at the other boys, and I knew it was the signal to attack me. I wondered what I would look like when they finished with me.With a rush, they were on top of me, pummeling and kicking. Fortunately, we rarely wore shoes in the summer. Still, I felt a sharp pain in my side as a boy kicked me in the ribs. I tasted blood when Carl punched me in the mouth. I could feel the teeth loosen as my cut lip ballooned. My nose felt broken, and one eye was already swelling shut.Finally, the boys parted from their handiwork, moving once again into a circle to consider me the way any animal pack looks at fallen prey. Carl was reaching into my pockets and taking the money, including the dime I had found beside the road on my way to the docks that afternoon. I had thought I was lucky when I found it.I lay there crying as defeat settled on me, but it was more than that. I wondered where I would get money to feed Bones. I couldn't keep taking groceries out of my house. If my parents caught me, they would beat me too, even though that rarely happened, but stealing from my family would surely lead to a severe whipping.
Young Mungo
Mungo was writhing in the dirt, blinking, when soft brown eyes looked down at him and there was a flash of a perfect, dazzling smile. He was a beautiful boy; dazed as he was, Mungo was still winded by his beauty. He had the broad-boned nose of a proud Sheltie and dark eyebrows under thick black hair, parted as neat as any parish priest's. He seemed to be saying something, but Mungo couldn't hear him over the din in his skull. Mungo raised his hand to ask for help. Then the boy's foot rose up high and came down like a hoof on the side of Mungo's head.The white flooded back. It felt like when he sat by himself in the darkness and Jodie turned on the big light, the bare bulb with no lamp-shade, and it burned his skull. The foot came down again and again, trying to sever his head from his body. Mungo could hear the rubbery squeak of the trainer against his face. He could taste the blood from his ear and the salt from his eyes in his mouth and in a delayed reflex he pulled his hands up to cover his face.The stomping took on the rhythm of a happy jig. Mungo couldn't see through the pain. The foot came down again and then travelled the length of his body. Then the beautiful boy walked the length of Mungo. He did it in marching strides, like a cartoon Nazi. He turned above Mungo's head, goose-stepped on his heel and made to walk back down the fallen body. The next foot never fell.Ha-Ha was there, the tomahawk above his head, and he cleaved it down on the beautiful Catholic and the boy fell like a wasted sapling. The side of his brother's face was scarlet. There was a curtain of his own blood falling from a line that stretched from his ear to his mouth. It was already raised and puckered white at the edges, like the torn fat on a rasher of bacon. Ha-Ha tapped Mungo with his toe and then he turned, axe above his head, and started hacking at the forest of Fenians.Mungo lay on the wet ground. He could not lift himself from where he had been stamped into the earth. He would have frozen but for the inferno of his pain. And as the fighting raged above him, he closed his eyes.
Floating Twigs
Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less
The War of Art
Floating Twigs
Floating Twigs
We were passing Helmer's Creek. It wasn't really a creek. It was a man-made canal cut through a low area of Panther Dunes years before I was born. I still don't know why it was there, but I suppose they had their reasons when it was created. A plank footbridge crossed it near where we stood.I wiped the sweat that was gathering on my brow and realized the day was already much too hot. I'd heard the weather report, and the high was expected to top a hundred. It seemed close to that already. The water, the sun shimmering on it, invited me in. It had apparently invited Bones as well. He plunged in, swam across to the other side, huffing through his mouth, then reversed and swam back to where we were. He looked as if he had a big smile on his face, and I marveled that a three-legged dog could swim and not go in circles.“You mind if I go swimming?” I asked.“Suit yourself,” Hank answered.I removed my shoes and shirt and began to wade into the canal, but then I thought better of it. I didn't want my denim shorts to chafe at me all day, which they would if I walked around in them in the hot sun until they dried, and that would take an hour or two. The added heat of the day would make me miserable.I turned to Hank. “You mind if I go skinny-dipping?”He considered my question, shrugged, and said, “Suit yourself.”Stepping up onto the shore, I shucked my shorts and underwear. I'd never been naked in front of Hank before, but he was paying me no attention anyway, and I figured he'd seen his share of naked boys in his life. Besides, I trusted him completely. He deserved my trust more than I deserved to know his history.I waded back into the water and splashed around, cooling off from the heat of the sun that had gripped me moments before. Bones swam around me, seeming to want to play some canine version of tag.After refreshing myself in the canal, I crawled back onto the shore and quickly dressed. I wasn't exactly used to going naked outside, and the feeling was an odd one.I noticed Hank still ignoring me as I dressed.“Sorry if I embarrassed you,” I said.“No, mostly I'm jealous. I'd like to take a dip in this heat myself.”“Why don't you?” I asked.“You're still young,” he said. “I'm old. There's a difference.”I could see his point. As I mentioned, he was probably used to seeing naked boys in his lifetime, but I'd never seen a naked man. I was thankful he didn't take me up on my suggestion.Once I was dressed and we were again on our way in our half-hearted search for Diablo, I pressed Hank for details about the car accident. He refused to give them, though, saying only that the details didn't matter. The fact they were gone was all that did.
Young Mungo:
“It was only a wee game,” said Gallowgate. “It just got a little bit out of hand, that's all.”The man was leaning against a beech tree, near to Mungo's discarded clothes. He was smoking and digging the dirt out from under his thumbnail with the gutting knife. The blade caught one of the few rays that snuck through the canopy and glinted menacingly.Mungo's bottom lip started to tremble. He pinched it, pushed his nail into it until it was steadied. “It wasn't a game to me.”“Ah, c'mon. You know what boys are like. Everybody does something lit this. It's all part of growin' up. It's easier than getting a lassie in bother.”Mungo was angry at himself. He couldn't look the man in the face and found himself talking to the river's surface. The raspy voice didn't sound like his own. “Just you wait. Wait till I tell my big brother what you did. He will fuckin' kill you. He has a tomahawk and he'll split your stinkin' skull with it.”Gallowgate knew nothing about the legend of Ha-Ha. He chuckled as he fussed with his neat fringe. “Be a shame to ruin a guid haircut.”Mungo launched his pumice stone, but Gallowgate was too quick for him and dodged it. It clattered off a tree trunk and skittered through the ferns. The understorey swallowed all sound. They were alone again. Gallowgate folded his blade and tucked it away. “Look, it's possible that I went too far. But are ye sure you didnae enjoy it?” He was grinning now, small sharp teeth. “Even jist a wee bit?”Mungo shook his head slowly. “No.”The man sucked in through his teeth. “Fuck, then I'm really sorry, pal.” Gallowgate considered it for a moment, he even seemed a little remorseful. “But ah'm surprised to hear that. Specially after what Mo-Maw telt us about ye.”There was no blood at all left inside him, yet every inch of him felt bloated with a blistering rage. He blanched and flushed at the same time. “Whatever they say I've done – it was never anything like that.”“Z'at so?” Gallowgate looked contrite for a second, but the sharp point of his incisors stuck on his bottom lip and he became an animal again. “But that's no what ah've heard. It's the whole reason ye were sent away wi' us. To sort you out. To make a man out of ye.”“This is how ye make a man out of me?”“Naw. S'pose not,” he said. “But we're doing this out of the kindness of our hearts, taking a wee waif to gawk at the heathery hillside. So don't be ungrateful. Don't be so fuckin' stingy wi' the favours next time.” Gallowgate picked up the boy's underclothes, his T-shirt and boxer shorts. “In Barlinnie ye weren't allowed to wear yer own clothes. Ye were never given the same pair of underwear twice and by God, they never, ever fit right. Even when they had been washed ye could still smell some other fella on them, still feel the hundred fellas that had worn them afore you.” He ran the grey cotton between his fingers, then he pitched Mungo's underwear into the river. “Ye should wash them. We cannae be carryin' on like pure animals.”Mungo had to flounder downstream to catch the discarded clothes. He regarded them, familiar things he had worn a thousand times and wondered who they belonged to now.Gallowgate had become bored watching the boy flail around. He was irritable in his sobriety. “Anyhows, hurry up with that. Auld Chrissy is still gonnae show ye how to catch trout. It'll be a laugh if nothin' else.” Turning back towards the campsite he stopped short and flicked his cigarette dout towards Mungo. “And jist in case ye take a funny notion, ye cannae tell anybody about what happened. Not yer mammy, not yer brother. Ye'll never be a proper man if they knew whit ye did and how much ye liked it.”“I did not like it.” He spoke as clearly as he could manage.“Really?”It was then that something changed for Mungo. This was not something your mammy could kiss away. It was not a bully that your brother could chib with a blade. Nobody could make a pot of soup for it. The shame and the guilt were his to bear. Mungo knew Gallowgate was right. He couldn't tell anyone.“Besides,” said Gallowgate as he disappeared into the ferns, “everybody knows ye're a dirty wee poofter. A filthy little bender. It'd be yer word against mine.”Then he realized the men would do it again.
I ended up reading this novel and another of a similar bent back to back. (No pun intended.) I wrote a review for that other book, which was simultaneously a tacit review of Young Mungo — sort of a compare and contrast. You can read that review on the corresponding Goodreads review page.
Long story short, Young Mungo is top shelf stuff and I barely feel qualified to review what is so obviously a masterpiece. If you want more, check out that other review.
A tough call. Many disagree with reducing the effect of a piece of literature to a simple star rating, but truth be told I do it more for myself and less for others. It's a way of keeping track and a shorthand for the books I enjoyed, or hated, or books that were just middling. A near five-star read for me, this book is written in a register which just works, or does so at least for me. The story of a British High Court judge — specializing in family law? (I can't be sure) — middle age and feeling it, forced to deal with a marriage in strife while she would rather put herself fully into her work, for which she seems to have considerable talent. Novels of manners, novels of the quiet intricacies of family life can go so wrong, so easily, that I'm caught off guard when someone gets it exactly right. Not that this is wholly either, but it is a novel of human intricacies, and this is what seems to trip up so many writers. McEwan seems to remember to make the stories interesting, that in fact the greatest writer of them all would poison, or stab, or rape, or to chase by bear if it came to that, and the greatest sin would be to bore, to have people sitting endless in salons chatting in mutual navel-gazing. My favorite novels are when the writer balances the equation, getting both sides right. Here is the story of these people and they are real, or seem so to us — and here is why this story is interesting absent all of that faffing about. I've read two or three or four other McEwan novels (I've lost track) but at this point I've decided to line them all up in row, everything the man has written, and read them every one, over time. I can offer no higher recommendation than that.
In reading this book there were no aha moments, a few head-nodding moments, and a whole slew of head-shaking, frowny moments.
Too much ‘go without it how it feels.'
Not near enough ‘sit down, get over yourself, and work.'
Both yin and yang are of course necessary, but it would be hard to overemphasize the importance of unassuming grit, that simple, clear-minded work which actually gets it done. As this book proves, though, it is very easy to overemphasize the touchy-feely.
Creating is more akin to what the stonemason does. As artists we're less interested in what the forest spirit does, dancing about in flowing, sheer robes.
The author bills the science presented as Medicine 3.0, but at every turn my intuition screamed that what was being presented was at best Medicine 2.1. Not bad if Medicine 3.0 wasn't actually out there, but I feel that it is. You should still read “Outlive”. You should read all such books, popular health or popular medicine, I guess we call it, popular as much for an ability to speak with accessibility to the general populous as having any actual popularity.
We are in an age of embarrassing riches, no more so than with the feast of high quality, well-researched, well-meaning, thoughtful, and nuanced texts presented by such highly qualified individuals. It is to our detriment that we ignore even the scantest evidence where our greatest resource, our health, is concerned. For Peter Attia, I would say that although you can take the doctor out of the training, it's much more difficult to take the training out of the doctor. You really must read it to decide for yourself as I only have my gut instincts to go on. The science is infinitely complex and there is little agreement among the professionals about what it all means. At a certain point we have to trust the deeper parts of our intelligence to take over, synthesizing mountains of data and the various interpretations of those data. Intuition gets short shrift in our society.
Peter Attia seems in the throws of the paradigms he's struggling against, still very much attuned to a mid- to a late 2oth century mindset, a practice still bounded by old understandings despite an ostensibly cheery prognosis overall.
I'm hesitant to give specifics and argue against professional training, but the areas that pinged my radar the highest were his advice on exercise, his reliance on numbers and extreme testing, and his underestimation of the power of fasting. It all seems a bit out of balance to me.
Compare and contrast (for yourself) this book against books like Richard Johnson's “Nature Wants Us to Be Fat” (2022), Daniel Lieberman's “Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding” (2021), and Steve Hendricks “The Oldest Cure in the World: Adventures in the Art and Science of Fasting” (2022). There are many areas where these books are in agreement with Attia's advice, but worrying in the ways they disagree, sometime sharply. This list of books of course is in no way exhaustive, with new science coming at us every day. We are foolish if we don't at least try to make sense of it all. The stakes are ridiculously high. The price too precious.
Well, 3 stars for anything which promotes fasting with even moderate intelligence. Ponce de León didn't find the fountain of youth of course, but we have the next best thing. Best of all it requires literally doing nothing — specifically doing nothing with food. Just stop. There are nuances to everything and devils to all details, though, and Bryant promotes calorie counting in this book, an approach that is, to my mind, antithetical to fasting. It leads me to believe that however great the author's research, his understanding of intermittent fasting is incomplete, and his understanding of nutrition out of date. Given the proper environment, the appetite can perfectly regulate itself. This is one of the primary benefits of IF. Doing without food resets the body to a healthy relationship to food. What's more, calorie counting itself, whether fasting is included or not, has been proven ineffective. Calorie counts for almost all foods are way off and vary greatly. Beyond that there is the understanding that calories in/calories out is just bad science. The biological processes which comprise digestion are astoundingly complex and not at all quantifiable from such a binary and simplistic perspective. The long and short of it is that the body will tend to increase metabolism with more calories and decrease it with less. It's only the ingestion of excess calories continually over time that contribute to obesity, and even here it's only a sliver of the story. See “Nature Wants Us to Be Fat” by Richard Johnson for a more sophisticated understanding of weight loss.
Intermittent fasting absolutely works and represents perhaps the most natural, perfect way of eating, something in line with how we've evolved to deal with food. This isn't a bad book on the subject; it's just not a particularly good one. As with most things, your best bet is to read many books and not latch onto any one particular theory, at least not until your education is more complete.
There's way too much conflation of Eastern philosophy now with mysticism. Authors and practitioners need to begin to make a clear distinction once again. Singer sounds more like a preacher than someone expounding on an aspect of Eastern philosophy. This generation of writers and teachers are largely suspect now as a result. If I wanted talk of Christ, I would go to church.
