F.

A few good ideas amidst crappy writing, tons of nonsense, and an all-around detestable style of story-telling. What a (f*cking) stupid book...

I'm giving this a preemptive 2 stars. Must all self-help books be written in a condescending tone, by people that ‘researched' something online for a week? Do we need supernatural phenomena taking place in order to enjoy tantra? Final question: is it possible the wife started feeling better due to estrogen and iron+vitamin supplementation, without special tantra sex positions making her periods “normal”? Yikes.

“(...) if you had demonstrated a mobile phone to someone in the 15th century, you probably would have been burned at the stake (...), but mobile phones actually work even if most of us do not [understand] the physics involved.” (Of course, ‘sacred' sex energy and the physics of mobile phones work hand-in-hand. Good argument.)

“This is how Western civilization was first introduced to binary arithmetic (...) [which is] also the language of all modern computers. So the computer used to write and produce the book you are reading has been developed as a direct result of Taoist Yin/Yang theory.” — Look, I actually do cherish Daoism as a philosophy (not the religious practice); but this is plain wrong and honesty a ridiculous statement. Binary is there because of the physics of electrical signals. Of course the author would then argue that computers work like tantra and mobile phones...

“It's not a great leap to imagine that if (...) [you visualize] a circuit through your body, you actually create a circuit.” Well, if you say so, why bother with proof...

At this point I'll stop quoting the book. It's too easy to dismantle cherry-picked sections.

I'd like to vouch for ‘vagina' and ‘penis' as great words. I use them whenever they make sense, i.e. where appropriate — instead of ‘pussy' and ‘dick'. I don't think ‘yoni' and ‘jade stalk' make things any better, although I concede they're funnier terms. Vaginas are lovely, and I disagree that the term has negative connotations. If Latin sounds evil to the author(s), I propose they use the Ancient Greek term, which sounds just as whimsical as ‘yoni'. In much the same vein, I also propose the author(s) consider the possibility that Western culture isn't a source of Higher Evil, as they routinely advance. I just think the book would be far more enjoyable without the ‘holier than thou' statements every other paragraph.

—

Edit: I'm done, having stopped around 50%. I wish all the best for this couple, but I hope to never again read one of their books. This was a joyless grind.

Great visuals, but mediocre text-wise. No sense of a coherent narrative about how so many immense events fit together into such an important decade for Berlin, nor how art is really affected by them.

I've been following Randall's work since xkcd #83 — damn, I'm getting old! —, and ‘What If? 2' reads more like some of his filler work in the comics. It's 25% less compelling than its predecessor, but you're still getting a very interesting read out of this one.

Well, this isn't very good.

A blog post with some action points stretched for no reason. If you want a history of the method and vague recommendations, this is it.

Why shouldn't the child use plastic cups? Because “they” say so. Good. Ad eternum filler content backed by wishful thinking.

Disclaimer: I'll raise my kids largely in the Montessori tradition, but without dogma. And, I think, this isn't the source material for how we'll decorate the home.