Levi

“Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well
a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind
one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out;
and that is far the most unhappy thing of all.”
- Agamemnon, 1327-1330

Aeschylus is considered the master of lyrical tragedy; his language is much more poetic than Sophocles and therefore much harder to read in translation. I found occasionally wondering “what the hell exactly am I reading?” but for the most part I was able to track with it.

I've been really impressed by these translations by Lattimore which capture a lot of the poetry, which is really hard to do in translation. It's truly very beautiful.

The plot is very sparse in each of these plays. These were written in the early days of the development of Greek tragedic plays, so it's almost a set of lyrics that are inspired by a particular event from the popular stories of their mythology. Musicals are the closest modern thing we have to the lyric dramas of ancient Greece. There is a plot, to be sure. There is a series of events with multiple actors and a rise in tension culminating in a climax, to be sure, but these usually only have two actors at a time (not counting the chorus), are typically only one scene at one setting, and any action happens offscreen. You're not reading it for the plot; you're reading it for the poetry.

This particular book of Aeschylus is the Oresteia, a trilogy, each play about 60 pages long. It is special for being the only surviving complete trilogy we have by Aeschylus, who is the earliest of the great three Greek tragedians (Euripides and Sophocles being the others). So, loving the ancients as I do, I was eager to get into it.

The plot

The first two plays, Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers, are soap operas about family members killing each other. The third, the Euripides, is a court room battle between gods, based on the subject matter of the first two plays, to decide whether Orestes is justified in killing his mother in revenge for her having killed his father, the king of the city (Thebes).

So the whole trilogy is about the family of Atreus, which is truly, deeply, disturbed.

If you recall your boy Agamemnon, from the Trojan War, the guy who headed up all the Greek armies to take back his brother's wife Helen? That guy comes home. Turns out, before he went on the Trojan War killing spree, he made a sacrifice to the gods to ensure victory. He made a sacrifice of........one of his daughters. Turns out, his wife was unhappy about this.

Despite the clear motivation, his wife is easily the least sympathetic character in any of the plays. She's been sleeping with her husband's rival and plotting to kill old Ag when he comes back. She also reads a bit like a narcissist, unable to have basic empathy for others.

Granted, she has been through some hard things in life. One of her daughters was killed by her husband. Also, her name is Clytemnestra. Yikes.

For his part, Agamemnon has some beatiful passages that seem to foreshadow his end.

“From the gods who sit in grandeur
grace comes somehow violent.”
- Agamemnon, 182

“Justice so moves that those only learn
who suffer; and the future
you shall know when it has come; before then, forget it.
It is grief too soon given.
All will come clear in the next dawn's sunlight.
Let good fortune follow these things as
she who is here desires,
our Apian land's singlehearted protectress.”
- Agamemnon, 250-257

When Agamemnon comes back, ole Clyte is sweet as roses, lures him inside, surrounds him with robes to entangle him, and then stabs him to death. It's really chilling stuff. And then she and his brother begin ruling, joyous to be doing so over his dead body. Nasty people.

“Chorus: Have your way, gorge and grow fat, soil justice, while the power is yours.
Aegisthus: You shall pay, make no mistake, for this misguided insolence.
Chorus: Crow and strut, brave cockerel by your hen; you have no threats to fear.”
- Agamemnon, 1668-1671

So that's the first play. It sets you up really well to hate Clyte and her lover, and the second play, the Libation Bearers, is satisfying because you see these awful people get theirs.
 
How do they get theirs? Well, Ag and Clyte had two other children, besides the sacrificed one. They had a daughter, Electra, who is mega pissed about the whole killing-my-dad thing. Her brother, Orestes, is in exile for many years, growing up to be a man. Then he comes back in disguise, kills his mother and her lover, and becomes the new rightful ruler of Thebes.

In short, it's a play all about grief, about the catharsis of revenge...or justice, depending on how you look at it (more on that later).

Grief:
“My cheek shows bright, ripped in the bloody furrows
of nails gashing the skin.
This is my life: to feed the heart on hard-drawn breath.
And in my grief, with splitting weft
of ragtorn linen across my heart's
brave show of robes
came sound of my hands' strokes
in sorrows whence smiles are fled.”
- The Libation Bearers, 24-31

Justice:
“The day of destiny waits for the free man as well
as for the man enslaved beneath an alien hand.”
- The Libation Bearers, 103-104

Bitter irony:
“You love your man, then? You shall lie in the same grave
with him, and never be unfaithful even in death.”
- The Libation Bearers, 894-895

A foreshadowing of dark things to come for Orestes, for one cannot kill his mother and have no repercussions:
“Take care. Your mother's curse, like dogs, will drag you down.”
- The Libation Bearers, 924

“I would have you know, I see not how this thing will end.
I am a charioteer whose course is wrenched outside
the track, for I am beaten, my rebellious senses
bolt with my headlong and the fear against my heart
is ready for the singing and dance of wrath.”
- The Libation Bearers, 1021-1025

It's a bit disturbing how easily he kills his mother but the big picture is, by this point you're happy to see them both dead. Awesome, they both deserved it, we're good, everyone's happy.
 
NOT. 
 
In the final play (titled Euripedes, the fancy name for the Furies), it turns out the Furies are NOT happy about anyone who kills their mother, no matter how justified you think you are. The blood cries out.

The Furies come for your boy Orestes, they want him to pay blood for blood. Orestes says hey, the god Apollo told me it was ok! So, Athena is called on to adjudicate a court case with plaintiff Apollo on the left and plaintiff the Furies on the right.

The Theme of “the Euripides”
 
It's a rather interesting play because the Furies represent the old gods of Greece (barbaric, primeval, primal, unreasoning) and Apollo represents the new gods (reasonable, thinking, intelligent) and Athena is wisdom, who tries to marry the two and appease them. The play represents Ancient Greece wrestling with its own identity as it develops into democratized, (semi-)civilized city-states.
 
So when Athena rules in Apollo's favor and Orestes gets off the hook, the endless chain of revenge killings finally ends.

“I will speak in defence
of reason: for the very child
of vanity is violence;
but out of health
in the heart issues the beloved
and the longed-for, prosperity.”
- The Eumenides, 532-537 (emphasis mine)

It represents progression from the old justice to a new more civilized one: from Lex Talionis (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) to something adjudicated by higher powers using reason to dictate justice and settle disputes in a way that finally stops the endless revenge killing that defined the old ways.

I think this is a powerful theme when you consider the historical significance of the justice system. Think about it: before then, the whole government of any people was just a single person: a king, or tyrant. This single person was executive, judicial, and legislative all at once. And he was not elected, but rather determined by the latest struggle of wills, the outcome of armed conflict. So, when Orestes kills his mother and her lover (the king and queen) he is actually just operating according to the established order of things; that is how corrupt leaders are deposed in their world.

He also is reclaiming his rightful throne, which simultaneously grants him the right to dispense justice...which is what he's just done by killing them. If you kill the current king, you're the new king. If you're the new king, then you can dispense justice as you see fit.

The hope in that system is that sometimes you get a king who is noble and just. But what happens when the king has a conflict of interest? In this play, Orestes has a huge conflict of interest: one of the people who needs to be removed is his own mother, and the murder in question was against his own father.

And there is a natural law at play (which the Furies represent), which is that it is perverse and disturbing to kill your own family. (Actually we believe today that it's rather perverse to kill anyone, but they hadn't yet arrived to this point in their ethics.)

Loyalty to Family vs The State

This play is one part of a wider theme in Greek literature. There was a belief in the State that was very strong. Socrates made a career of being “the gadfly that stings Athens into action,” even while knowing that this would eventually cost him his life, because he believed that the good of the State came above his own. He refuses an offer to flee the night before his execution for the same reason: who am I to question the will of the state, which has made me who I am?

And then when it comes to Plato, he states plainly in the Republic that the State should have precedence over the family.

This idea is hard for me, someone heavily disillusioned with the fake democracy of America that we have today.

But if I stop and think about their context, about what governments they had to compare against, how they were pushing against the sheer darkness surrounding them on all sides of barbarism and endless war and strife...then yes. I could see how I could give myself over to the cause. I can see how I might die for an idea like that.

Summary of Overall Impressions
 
I've gone widely astray from focusing on the plays themselves, but this in and of itself speaks to the power of the themes in the Oresteia, the fact that it can inspire so much more thought. My measure of a good book is that it makes me think afterward, and Aeschylus has made me do that. And for that I am grateful.

So that's a summary. But I will spend the rest of this review diving deeper into the Furies and into sharing excerpts of the beautiful poetry in this play.

A Deeper Dive into the Furies

Note that Athena admits her perspective (partiality?) as a judge. Because she was born differently than most, she will not be moved unduly by the case having to do with a mother being killed: she was not born of a woman like others, but rather, if you recall your mythology, sprung straight from the brain of Zeus. I think this is not an accidental side-note, but rather, a very deliberate choice. In the Greek mythos, wisdom is birthed not from a woman, but from the brain (intellect, thinking, reason) of a man. There is a sexist undertone here, and it is not unwarranted—the ancient Greek thought was heavily misogynistic (and I say that from considerable evidence, having read a fair amount of Plato, Homer, Sophocles, and Aeschlyus, as well as researched the topic at great length). But I do find it interesting that Athena herself is feminine.

Regardless, if we set aside the possible sexist undertones, I think there is possibly something of depth and interest to this idea of Athena being the judge. At first I was mystified by the idea that the judge would be partial, but as I started to think about it, her unique qualifications makes her not so much partial, but rather, the only possible impartial person. We all know how hard it is to be objective about one's mother—being loyal to one's mother is one of the most deeply ingrained instincts. So actually, similarly to how in a modern court, jurors are screened to ensure that no jury member is predisposed regarding the case, here all others but Athena are disqualified, relatively speaking, to her.

This court case is about establishing the new, better system of justice, one that's not based on feelings, not just reacting out of strong feelings, which is exactly what leads you to the endless revenge-killings that they had previously been stuck in. It represents moving beyond that to something higher: a justice based not on feelings but on reason.

The Blessing of the Furies

After the Furies lose the court case, and then Athena spends a lot of time trying to appease their fury. She ends up appealing to their mutual interest of the benefit of the people of Thebes, and convinces them to bless the land instead of curse it. Their blessing on the land is one of the most beautiful passages.

It's reminiscent to me of some passages in the Bible. It felt healing to me, like speaking a word of blessing to heal all the years of bloodshed in the past, saying: let things now begin to heal.

Outrage of the Furies at their Treatment

“Gods of the younger generation, you have ridden down
the laws of the elder time, torn them out of my hands.
I, disinherited, suffering, heavy with anger
shall let loose on the land
the vindictive poison
dripping deadly out of my heart upon the ground;
this form itself shall breed
cancer, the leafless, the barren
to strike, for the right, their low lands
and drag its smear of mortal infection on the ground.
What shall I do? Afflicted
I am mocked by these people.
I have borne what can not
be borne. Great the sorrows and the dishonor upon
the sad daughters of night.”
- The Eumenides, 778-792

The Furies Blessing

“Let there blow no wind that wrecks the trees.
I pronounce words of grace.
Nor blaze of heat blind the blossoms of grown plants, nor
cross the circles of its right
place. Let no barren deadly sickness creep and kill.
Flocks fatten. Earth be kind
to them, with double fold of fruit
in time appointed for its yielding. Secret child
of earth, her hidden wealth, bestow
blessing and surprise of gods.”
- The Eumenides, 938-948

“Death of manhood cut down
before its prime I forbid:
girl's grace and glory find
men to live life with them.
Grant, you who have the power.
And o, steering spirits of law,
goddesses of destiny,
sisters from my mother, hear;
in all house implicate,
in all time heavy of hand
on whom your just arrest befalls,
august among goddesses, bestow.”
- The Eumenides, 954-967

Further Quotes

If you're still reading this review, that's amazing! Finally, here are other quotes I found particularly striking.

“Zeus, who guided men to think,
who has laid it down that wisdom
comes alone through suffering.”
- Agamemnon, 176

“Yet the good shepherd, who knows his flock,
the eyes of men cannot lie to him,
that with water of feigned
love seem to smile from the true heart.”
- Agamemnon, 795-798

“Yet it is true: the high strength of men
knows no content with limitation. Sickness
chambered beside it beats at the wall between.
Man's fate that sets a true
course yet may strike upon
the blind and sudden reefs of disaster.”
- Agamemnon, 1001-1016

“No, but a house that God hates, guilty within
of kindred blood shed, torture of its own,
the shambles for men's butchery, the dripping floor.”
- Agamemnon, 1090-1092

“Yet once more will I speak, and not this time my own
death's threnody. I call upon the Sun in prayer
against that ultimate shining when the avengers strike
these monsters down in blood, that they avenge as well
one simple slave who died, a small thing, lightly killed.”
- Agamemnon, 1322-1326

“Let one come, in strength
of spear, some man at arms who will set free the house
holding the Scythian bow backbent in his hands,
a barbarous god of war spattering arrows
or closing to slash, with sword hilted fast to his hand.”
- The Libation Bearers, 159-163

“The gods know, and we call upon the gods; they know
how we are spun in circles like seafarers, in
what storms. But if we are to win, and our ship live,
from one small seed could burgeon an enormous tree.”
- The Libation Bearers, 201-204

“So, though you died, you shall not yet be dead, for when
a man dies, children are the voice of his salvation
afterward. Like corks upon the net, these hold
the drenched and flaxen meshes, and they will not drown.”
- The Libation Bearers, 504-507

“Right's anvil stands staunch on the ground
and the smith, Destiny, hammers out the sword.”
- The Libation Bearers, 646-647

“Now where away, Cilissa, through the castle gates,
with sorrow as your hireless fellow-wayfarer?”
- The Libation Bearers, 731-732

“Magical realism” is a genre that gets thrown about a lot, and I feel that description would fall short. The plot is that a girl in pre-war Paris has an encounter with a magical wooden ball that causes her to develop a condition where she cannot stay in the same place for more than a couple days without bleeding extensively. She has to stay on the move for the rest of her life or else she will die. This becomes something of an allegory for many things, although you're not always sure what. Occasionally, it felt a little like a personal allegory, but for the most part it did not veer into that cesspool that the Alchemist started, and for that I'm very thankful.

In fact, for the most part, this story was quite engaging. There's something very understated about this writing style, deceptively simple, yet evocative, almost reading like a myth sometimes. The pages flew by, as Aubry traveled from place to place and encountered all kinds of people, some of whom try to rescue her, a few of whom try to kill her, but most of whom are merely baffled and intrigued. It's a wide, wonderful world, and a mystery begins to develop halfway through, a place that is interconnected to the whole globe but that appears to have nothing to do with the magic ball. I won't describe the place because I feel that would be telling too much, but it is enthralling to explore.

I waffled a lot on whether to rate this with three stars or four. It's too bad because there's a lot of things to like and even love about this book, a lot of things the author does really well. The plot line is simple and yet intriguing, and they explore every interesting nuance of the premise.

I love the scene where she ties herself to a bedpost, so intent on not allowing her disease to make her leave her friends for the thousandth time, and ending up a bloody mess, and having to be rescued and taken away from there by helping friends...the psychological pain she is in was very moving for me.

I also really enjoyed a scene where she discovers she's able to come home because it has so utterly changed in the last several decades that it's no longer truly somewhere she's been anymore...she's a stranger in a strange land in her own hometown and with her own family.

There's also something very free and easy way that the author transitions into scenes and moods that are nothing short of sublime. I really got into the aesthetic. There are some beautiful, grand passages, too.

And I love the profound, brooding passages. The only trouble with them is that occasionally a passage that was meant to be profound comes off as silly to me. But I don't let that ruin the whole thing for me, that I could live with, that I understand: when you go for profound, you're either going to hit it out of the park or slam it into the dirt.

No, there was really only one thing that really kept this from doing it for me. It's that the protagonist is lacking depth.

At first I was carried by her charm, being a strong woman with a spear from Paris, traveling the world, seeing all kinds of things, having all manners of experiences...

But as time goes on, she, well...I just don't see much of a character progression. It's like she is all smoke and mirrors, a character built up larger than life because of her mystique and delicious name (Aubry Tourvel). The book itself plays on this theme for a chapter or two, exploring that truth: that people can seem like more than they are simply because they are exotic and unknown. The fact that the book calls out this theme and explores it a bit does it credit and helped redeem that problem.

And yet at the end of the day, I think I read more for character revealing and progression than anything else. That's, just...what a book is supposed to be to me. Even with all the other things done well...it just falls short. A book all about one character needs to have that one character really be something.

Do I regret reading this? No. But I'm not sure if I would seek it out again. Maybe, maybe...it was a cozy read, perhaps good for those days when I simply want a retreat from my own problem-infested world, into adventure and wonder. I'll certainly pay attention if this author publishes again.

So that's that. Neither a ringing endorsement or a “run for the hills!” A decently good book. Probably would work well for many other readers, particularly ones who are drawn to wonder, travel, and magic and who appreciate deep ponderings. Not so much for those who want highly psychological character dives or who are just looking for nonstop action. I have a feeling it will do well with YA as well.

I received an ARC copy of this from NetGalley. I don't think it has materially affected my review.

Have you ever read a book by an “expert,” found yourself vehemently disagreeing, being afraid to admit it, but then finally deciding: screw it, I'm going to speak up? That's me right now.

First: what's good about this book? It's a book expounding on lessons about how to pursue a vision, based on studying the book of Nehemiah from the Bible.

As bizarre as that sounds, I don't think his extracted truths from the story were too far-fetched, most of the time. I do think his approach alienates any non Christians reading the book, but if he's decided his target audience is just Christians, so be it.

He does a good job of covering the topic comprehensively and laying his chapters out to take you through the different stages of being a vision-casting leader, from having the vision through to leading a movement/organization, through to sustaining it.

He also does a good job of giving lots of examples from his real life that are visceral and striking. I learned a lot from this book.

And before I get to my objections, one more thing I'm grateful for, which is just that he is addressing one of the most important hidden truths in life in my opinion, which is that all of the big world changing things, anything of import, is driven by the few organizations (whether nonprofits, political organizations , businesses, grass roots movements, whatever) that have clear vision.

I came to this conclusion after reading Start With Why, a book that prompted me to look over all of the examples I could think of and see if they fit this paradigm.

Why is vision so important?

A company that has no vision right now: Star Wars as run by Disney. They have no vision for where they're going over the next several years; they're just throwing stuff against the wall at this point.

All great companies, organizations, and leaders have a solid vision that motivates people to move toward that point: a vision that is specific enough to be risky, and one that for various reasons motivates themselves and others, that connects to a firey passion that will push people way further than just motivating with money or negative consequences.

If you want to learn more about how to tell the difference between an organization with vision and one without it and why this is so freaking important (because it is!) I really recommend reading Start with Why. I think it's one of the most important nonfiction books of all time; and it doesn't just apply to one industry or just to business; it's a way of looking at life as a whole. What causes should I give myself to? Seriously. Read that book.

But anyways, back to this book. The principle: vision is powerful, motivating, etc. Now the question is, how do I know if I'm onto something? I have a vision idea...now what?

This book's answer? Sit on it. Do nothing. Just think and pray and plan.

I'm going to take a bold stance and say: I think that is some of the worst advice you could possibly give.

But first, let's explore why Stanley advocates for his stance. Let's give his argument a fair shake.

His prime suggestion in this book: when you have a vision, you should basically sit and think a lot, take no action. The reasons?
1) you aren't ready yet,
2) visions are always susceptible (inherently) to criticism, and people will criticize it to death, and
3) you need to be really sure before committing your time.

I'm going to contradict. I think people actually overthink vision too much. The surest way to fail at making something new is to take no action. As a software engineer, I have built many things over the last 12 years, and recently, one of them was my own vision that I promoted inside of a company where I was given a lot of latitude.

So I've learned a lot about startup thinking and product design from books and then applied it to developing real products. I've applied it outside work as well, and I think I've learned a couple of things about developing anything new, not just software.

In my experience, the only way you really know if something is a good vision/idea or not is to test it out in minature form and get feedback from reality (your “customers,” or the people who it is intended to impact); action is the only way you know for sure if this is the right thing to focus on above all others. Your experiment may reveal problems you weren't aware of. But even if the first experiment, even if the first 10 experiments “fail”, they will also help you find out if this really matters to you. Do I really care about this vision? Do I care about it so much that I should set aside all else to focus on it for several years of my life, maybe my whole life? The answer will come to you, in my experience, if you start down the path. Even if the first 10 experiments fail, if this vision really is burning in your heart, then each failed experiment will only solidify in your heart even more that this is the thing you really care about and no matter how much you fail you can't give up on it.

Now I want to address Andy Stanley's three reasons for waiting and taking no action. His first reason: “you aren't ready yet.” Ok first of all, you will never be ready. Second, the only way to get ready is to build experience...by...taking...action. Everything else you “learn” in your head is not real. You haven't learned anything until you take risk and try something. Only then can you refine your vision.

Andy's second reason: visions are inherently susceptible to criticism; once you “go public” lots of people will criticize it. My answer: if you can't develop thick skin then you will never do anything hard in your life, which is another way of saying you will never do anything meaningful in your life. If you don't have thick skin, do whatever it takes to develop it. Hint: partly, the only way you can develop it is by actually doing things and experiencing rejection and criticism.

And that's not meant to minimize how much it sucks to be rejected. I hate it too. But the reality is, no matter how much you “prepare” (and again none of that preparation is real if you're not taking action), none of that will make you immune to criticism. You have to “go public” and solicit other people's help to get anything meaningful done, even personal goals a lot of times. You've got to get over yourself.

Andy's third reason: you need to be really sure before committing your time. My answer: the same, the only way to minimize risk of doing the wrong thing is by testing things out in smaller form.

I've worked at places where we had no contact with customers. Or one place, even worse, where we pretended to...but all that happened was that once a year our product manager had a conference with one segment of our users, and those were basically super-users at that. Once a year! And then whatever ideas she had, those were considered gold, she was now the “user expert”...ugh.

Product discovery is the process of discovering what has value to users (or customers or fans or whoever is on the other end of the thing you want to do). What problems do they have? A little broader, what opportunities do they have (which encompasses desires and wants and needs, not just “problems”)? How much does it matter to them to solve that problem? Are they already sacrificing time and money on workarounds? Etc. If you are totally new to this space, I would recommend reading The Mom Test first.

Actually, I would first recommend learning why companies fail who don't do enough customer discovery. And then once you know wy discovery is so important, then I would read the Mom Test because it will explain to you how to avoid the biggest pitfalls in discovery, why most people will lie to you, and what to do about it.

After that, I would recommend reading Zero to One by Thiel if you're creating a totally new thing, or Continuous Discovery Habits by Torres if you are iterating on an existing thing.

Okay, now that all the book recommendations are out of the way. What did I think of this Visioneering book overall?

There were good points in it. It was ain interesting layout; basically he studied the story of Nehemiah from scripture to extract principles from, which to me made it more interesting. He has lots of insights on vision. However at the end of the day, does the book do more good than harm? 50/50. I can't predict that, but I can say, I feel like I've seen it do a lot of harm in the company I'm a part of. If I was trying to set someone on what I think is most likely (in my humble opinion) the best path, I would not recommend this book.

My view of nonfiction is highly practical. If it doesn't do a net goot o people then how can I give it a high star rating? Nevertheless there are good things in it; you could have a net positive experience. There are a lot of good things about it. Hence my rating.

Much needed messages about the different types of rest we need. After I read through and understood what she meant by each of the areas, I think another way of saying the same thing would be to point out several areas of life where we are becoming depleted as a society, but by wording it in this novel framework, she helped me to think about it differently and inspired me to take better care of myself.

Thematically, who she is constantly comes through, which could be a turn off to some people. She's unapologetically female, Christian, and a doctor, and that pretty much comes through in every page. She doesn't shove the Christianity down your throat but seems open to encouraging people to find spirituality in whatever realm they can, and just points out that spirituality does have a big impact on health, which I think is a needed message for all of us.

I'm glad she wrote this book! It helped me.

Aeschylus has two bodies of work extant. (Most ancient plays are lost to the dusts of time.) The two bodies of work we have are: A) the Orestia, a complete trilogy, and B) 4 other random plays that were all part of a trilogy, but since we don't have the other plays in those trilogies, that makes our understanding of them not as complete.

This is composed of four plays: The Suppliant Maidens, Persians, Seven Against Thebes, and Prometheus Bound.

The Suppliants is one of the first plays ever. Back in this era, the chorus was the main character. That was dropped pretty quickly, but it's just interesting to me that that's even what the convention/rule was for a while. It also has an interesting historical bent, where it reveals some of the ancient interminglings between the Egyptian and Greek bloodlines.”

The Persians is remarkable: it's written for a Greek audience about their enemies, and it casts the audience's enemies in such a sympathetic light as has perhaps never been done since. The Greeks had just beaten the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. The terrible misfortunes that befell the Persian army one after another is riveting to read about in verse.

This was a war between freedom (democracy) and slavery to the Persians. Aeschylus himself had fought in the war against the Persians. So for them to cast the Persians in such a sympathetic light, for them to actually empathize with how hard the news must have struck the Persians that they had lost, to go so strongly against nationalistic fervor and transcend that, is quite amazing. Having sympathy for your enemy is one of my highest spiritual goals. I wish I could have seen how the Athenians reacted to this play!

Seven Against Thebes is about the seven champions who assaulted the seven gates of Thebes when they tried to take the city. It's notably lacking in plot or much modern interest, but has some beautiful descriptions nonetheless. But it was very forgettable.

Prometheus Bound is interesting. It's the easiest to read, also quite strange: it's about Hephaestus, alongside Might and Violence, binding Prometheus to a rock as punishment from Zeus for giving man fire and other technologies. It's an underdog story where all the characters are gods.

At first it was always denigrated as being too bombastic and for the fact that all of its characters are essentially gods or otherwise totally unlike man. However, interest in it has been revitalized and it's now considered a great work. I found some of its passages to be the most beautiful and striking; there is zero plot, but I'm glad that I read it.

Considering how ancient that these plays are, I consider it amazing that Aeschylus developed his themes so strongly, and the evocative imagery he uses that have been reused ever since also make these plays a reflection of his greatness. While reading these fragmented plays is not the most satisfying experience, I would recommend reading Persians especially, although I would still place the Oresteia far above these others.

If only we had the full trilogies that these plays were taken from, they could be much more meaningful. I imagine in particular that Prometheus Bound could be the first act in a trilogy where Heracles comes and unleashes him later. I also would love to see how Persians fits into the bigger trilogy that it was taken from.

Aescyhylus, I tip my hat to you. Thank you for being one of the great forerunners of history who started so much.

Helpful but also boring, very corporate.

This is a really unique take on first contact as well as a chilling descent into madness, and all on a mountain as mysterious as time itself. I love this. Starting with the first page.

The forward to this is magnificently delicious. This is horror done right, you don't even realize it's horror, but it's setting you up with a growing mystery & a growing sense of unease/dread in the style of realism, which makes it all the more compelling. He's written this forward like a memoir. It's the classic “I found this mysterious book” setup, but by far the best execution I have ever seen, bar none.

It is its own stand-alone story, the characters are vivid, the subject matter (his wildly intelligent and divergent brother going missing), everything about it is compelling. I enjoy reading about wildly intelligent, divergent thinkers. There's a charm to the concept. Probably makes me feel better about my ADHD! By the time it got to the end of the foreward, it was pitch perfect, and had me on the edge of my seat begging to read more; it was hard to stop listening at that point, but I had gotten to work and I needed to go in and start my day, damn it!

As I progressed, this book continued to be really rewarding. The author does a great job of giving us continual new pieces of information so you get to feel like you're really learning something and progressing (a lot of mystery novels I have read fall into the trap of not revealing enough). He also has done some really unique worldbuilding that is really interesting to explore. The tension continues to heighten and there is violence and a bit of macabre gore, although I wouldn't say this ever becomes a full on horror book, more just a thriller.

The great thing is that in between all of these tense moments of action there is a lot of deep pondering, there is more backstory to the main character and his relationships constantly revealed, and the other characters also come more to life. This book is the full package.

The ending is for me not satisfying. Well, it's satisfying in the sense of yes, you learn about the mystery of the mountain and you have a very definitive ending and several mysteries are resolved, the worldbuilding is revealed, etc. However, the main message is not satisfying to me.

The main message is essentially that, in the face of God (whoever or whatever that may be), but in the face of the fact that we don't really have free will, that reality itself is a box that we are trapped in, and that even moments of transcendence or still pre-scripted for us and are essentially just us moving up to a bigger box...in the face of the colossal weight of realizing you have free will, what can you do? Well the answer given here is the same as Fight Club and many other stories. The ultimate “fuck you” to God or the universe or whatever is suicide: you can choose to remove yourself from reality altogether.

I have had the same thoughts and struggles with free will and God and been tempted to react in the exact same way, but ultimately, I have come to believe that my thinking was warped. I believe it comes out of my need to control life: like a toddler throwing a tantrum, if I can't control the rules of the game, then I'm not going to play!

When I was writing this review I started by trying to explain all of life history around that question and how I arrived at that conclusion, and then I realized this would be waaaay too much for a review of a book. So I won't really explain more than that for now.

Back to this book: it does one of the most important things for me as a reader: it gets me thinking about deeper questions and seeking for how to work them out in my own life.

Regardless of me agreeing with the authors apparent conclusion, this book still is a great book because it stimulates those musings and hopefully that turns into discussions with others and greater clarity. And the book gets you there in a riveting, engaging, novel way. I heartily recommend to is book to anyone, so long as thrillers don't disturb your peace too much.

Is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde science fiction? I found myself wondering this as I read it. The plot centers around a speculative scientific breakthrough that enables the main character (I won't call him the “hero”) to transform his body into an alternate body, complete with an alternate personality and sense of morality. Obviously no such drug existed in Victorian times; in fact no such drug exists today, so it's still science fiction by our own standards.

I say that no such drug exists today but actually, in a broader sense, as far as altering one's personality, you could definitely say that alcohol does that for people. Furthermore, one of the hallmark signs of addiction is that it causes the addict to do things that he is normally morally opposed to, things that cause him great moral distress.

I happen to know a lot about alcoholism. I'm not an alcoholic, but I am part of a rich twelve step tradition that points to Alcoholics Anonymous as its origin. So I've read a lot of the AA literature throughout the years; in fact I read the “big book”, Alcoholics Anonymous, on a regular ongoing basis as a spiritual discipline.

So reading Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was of great interest to me. People have theorized for a long time on whether he was writing an allegory about bipolar disorder or alcoholism or something else. I don't think it's necessarily an allegory, but I will say that I think RLS had some insight into how alcoholics think and behave and how the progression works. As Jekyll describes his back and forth journey into indulging more and more in this dark pleasure, I can't help but see clear parallels. He even uses a metaphor for the way “a drunk” behaves...RSL may have been ahead of his time in understanding alcoholism.

What else is this book? It's a thriller, it's chilling, and it has a mystery unraveling aspect for the first two thirds of the short book. Of course if you already know how it ends there is no mystery, but it is still interesting to try to piece together some of the strange things Jekyll does, like sending a message to a friend asking him to break into Jekylls quarters alongside Jekylls servant and then take out a certain box and hold onto it until an associate of Jekyll comes and asks for it. Why would he do that? I enjoyed trying to tease that one out.

But I don't think this story is primarily about the mystery. I think it's primarily (to me) about compartmentalization, addiction, progression into insanity, and in a broader sense, it's a scientific version of the Faustian Bargain that is one of the great themes of literature. For that alone this is a wonderful read. I heartily recommend it.

As for whether it's science fiction, I would say yes. To me it is science fiction at the core because it does what science fiction uniquely does well; it shows how science can affect our humanity and gets us to ask chilling questions that grapple with that sense of perverseness, the Uncanny Valley, the demon in the mirror.

It's fascinating to see where your heroes started.

Seven years ago, I was strolling through McKay's—a massive used bookstore in Nashville—and I did the unthinkable. Well, for me, anyways. I bought a book on whimsy. Normally I research to death first, but this time, this one time, I saw a book called Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb, and picked it up capriciously—the author's last name was almost identical to my own—and I began reading.

“My pen falters, then falls from my knuckly grip, leaving a worm's trail of ink across Fedwren's paper. I have spoiled another leaf of the fine stuff, in what I suspect is a futile endeavor. I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.”

And then he goes on to describe his first memory as a boy, his hand gripped in a much larger, callused hand, dragged to massive fortress doors on a dark night of icy gray rain. And as the narrator describes these things, these little memoir-like asides creep in, these comments wondering about his lack of memories, comments mentioning drugs and bitterness and death, as if from the perspective of a very old man looking back over a lifetime of hurt and regrets and...life.

Immediately there was something about this that felt cozy and comfortable and exciting all at once. All I knew was that this book was “large” enough to contain both coziness and adventure and sadness and rawness—having “assassin” in the title, after all—and that was enough for me. I bought it, took it home, and read it in the evenings while drinking malbec and eating peppered jerky and romano cheese, because food like this is mentioned so much in this book that you find yourself craving it like a heroine addict.

And I developed a bit of a habit. Now I've read three complete trilogies by Robin Hobb, and two of those trilogies I have actually re-read; I got my wife and my mother into it and we have read them all together as a group and discussed every week for a few years now.

Somewhere along the way I discovered that Robin Hobb was a pseudonym, and that Megan Lindholm was not only the author's real name, but also, Megan Lindholm was a name that she had written several other novels under in a distinct voice. I became intrigued to hear this distinct voice, but years went by, I was busy, and I never got around to it.

Until this year. For some reason, although I have always been a skinflint with buying the cheapest possible books, I found myself actually in a place where, as just one act of self-care for my own mental health, I started to actually spend a little bit of money on myself. Primarily through buying very nice copies of the Fitz and the Fool trilogy, but also, this nice 35th anniversary edition of Wizard of the Pigeons. For after all, this is the original break-out book Megan Lindholm, and she's one of my favorite living authors.

How different this is, and yet the same. Right from the first page I was drawn in. She writes in the style of a fairy tale, but it's also very specific to the city of Seattle; like James Joyce said of the book Ulysses, if Dublin (or in this case, Seattle) disappeared from the face of the earth, it could be re-created block by block with the detail in this book. I learned a lot about the Free Ride Area and the King Dome. And the sidewalks, oh the sidewalks...they used to be a whole story above ground, you know...

I also read this because of the premise: a homeless man on the streets is actually a modern street wizard, a type of wizard which Megan is creating out of whole cloth—in fact, I have seen this book cited as the prime precursor of the urban fantasy genre. How cool is that? But back to the book.

Our protagonist—a Viet Nam vet named Wizard—is not the only wizard in his world. He and the other street wizards follow a similar pattern: they each have unique powers and each have unique rules in order for their magic to work.

Wizard's particular gifts are endearing. Inspiring, even. I really love them. He has a gift of Knowing the inner truth that people need to hear. People are drawn to him, strangers, who come to him and pour out their hearts to him, and then he Knows the Truth that they need to hear, says it to them, and if they receive it, it changes the whole trajectory of their lives. This concept alone made the book worth gold to me.

But Wizard is a difficult character to be the protagonist of a whole book. He's a laconic character, silent and stubborn, immovable as a brick wall seemingly. He exhibits signs of depression and PTSD, and he is sometimes maddeningly silent. Yet for all this, the story good enough with pacing and plot and description that it still worked for me.

Something interesting to see in this book is that Robin Hobb's knack for writing compelling characters is at work here. Here she has several very distinct, compelling characters. But they aren't as developed over several books as she did later. It's neat to see her craft being germinated here. It's also neat to see her real-life compassion for the homeless (which you can learn about if you read her blog) shining through.

The main conflict of the book is centered around Wizard losing his magic when a romantic interest shows up, Lynda, who starts basically taking over his life, and he starts to break his rules. He loses the magic more and more until it seems that he is irrevocably lost. But then he meets with the other wizards again, one in particular who has been his mentor. And she says some things that really resonated with me at a level that transcends the story. Although I wonder if these will make sense out of context, I wanted to try to bring the magic of this book to you through sharing some of them here.“You invented those [rules] yourself, knowing you couldn't keep them. You wanted to break yourself so the magic would go away, so you wouldn't be a wizard and have a duty to it. But even in your desire to be free of it, the magic went to deep in you for you to destroy it...you made up your own rules to break.”“Stop pretending that you've been pretending.”“She believed all the old myths: Men have no feelings such as women harbor; they can share your home, your bed, and your money, but not your life. She knew all about ‘how men are,' but she had never really spoken to one. She wasn't going to let him get through.”

So, enough said. This book is iconic, a legend. Read it, if you must. Or try to resist, if you dare. Perhaps though, the more you run from it, the more inevitable it will become.

Have you ever found yourself reading a Robin Hobb book and thinking, “Huh. I'm a third of the way through this, but I still have no idea where this is going.”? Have you ever wanted to have that thought when you're 80% of the way through a book? Well, have I got the book for you!

In all seriousness, my wife and I found ourselves saying repeatedly how it was odd how, despite having no discernible through plot, we kept wanting to read more. It was highly interesting. And I will say, when I got to that last 20% of the book, it did start to make a little more sense; the big reveal and the direction it takes are foreshadowed throughout, it's just not...obvious foreshadowing.

This book is set in Withywoods, which I found an interesting albeit slower change of pace. It's not much of a spoiler to tell you that this book is set many years later than Fools Fate, and is about Fitz and Molly having married life together. At least, that's what the story is about at the onset. I love that Robin Hobb allowed us to really experience what that relationship is like for them, since after all we've only had 6 books of Fitz wishing he could have a real relationship with her again. It's really neat to see how their relationship has the same core as before but has significantly matured.

One of the things I love is that you learn more about the culture and history of the white prophets and their people. You also have a lot of the book hinging around a mysterious new person who has supposedly been birthed into the world who is presumably the world's next white prophet.

From there out I feel that anything I tell you about this book would be a major spoiler, but I will say, it does go in some bold new directions. There are several new characters, including one who will obviously be extremely important to the rest of the trilogy and perhaps beyond. This is the first book out of all the Fool and Fitz books that we have chapters written from someone's perspective other than Fitz. It's been engrossing.

The ending of the book is brutal, brutal, and more brutal, bordering on grimdark. There is some violence that is a bit shocking. Sometimes I wondered if it was too much, to make up for the fact that most of the book lacks any action. There is plenty of drama and things happening to care about, but this is one of the least action oriented books of the series. It's even more character driven.

Because of the darkness at the end of the book I might actually take a break before diving into the next one but, I can't wait to see what is revealed next about these characters and the world. It does end on a cliffhanger which isn't my favorite kind of ending, but I'm more than willing to overlook that. This is a solid entry for me with lots of great memories from having read it.

At some point I'm also thinking that this book would be a good study in how to make a book compelling without a clear plot. There's a lot of really creative things Robin Hobb (Megan Lindholm) is doing here and I'm so glad to see her never being complacent to keep writing in the box she's set for herself; I feel like she's always pushing her craft forward, and that's something I really seek to learn from as a writer.

Also I will mention that if you get the fancier versions of this particular trilogy, they are really worth it. They are just gorgeous with the gold and silver. $15-20 each and I don't normally spend that much money for a book but in this case I'm glad I did.

Sometimes you read something that asks the very questions that are your own burning questions, your own personal project. It was so cool to have that experience reading this.

This book is about a crew of diverse backgrounds romps through space. It's all about forging friendships with the other–people of other cultures, religions, species, and even alternate life-forms. There is tension, but it is more often in the form of interpersonal drama rather than thrilling life-threatening conditions, although there are a few of those. If you're looking for combat in your sci-fi, you will find none of that here. This is not your action-packed shoot-em-up in space. Rather, this is something rarely seen in science fiction: a really close look at relational dynamics.

But most importantly to me, this book asks questions like: could an AI become a human? Become loved? What if people figured out a way to transfer AIs that were previously body-less to physical bodies? Should they get rights? It also asks a lot of questions about what social norms are “normal,” and imagines a variety of other species in the galaxy that are reptilian, amphibian, chittinous, or even something without any analog on earth at all, and imagines how they might see the world through different eyes. These are all really great ways of challenging current societal norms around personal space, sex, relationships, how we do community, boundaries, and so much more.

I'm so thankful that Becky Chambers wrote this book, and look forward to reading more.

What's amazing about this book is that he had a lot of really good ideas that were birthed in Neuromancer for the first time (or the first time that was popularized): the Matrix, cyberspace, code jockeys, all of the ways humans modify their bodies with tech...there's a lot more too. The Matrix, Android Netrunner, and many other things heavily borrowed a lot of conceptual ground from Neuromancer.

What's not good is the heavy exposition, explaining how everything works, the insane amounts of technobabble, and just that it's almost impossible to follow at times. Honestly it's amazing that as many people read this as did. It would get absolutely nowhere in today's market. Sometimes it was an absolute chore to read. This is the first time I've found myself having to lookup cliffs notes and sites like that to help me keep track of what's going on in a scifi novel. This book reminds me of the style of some of the hard scifi in the 50s...it's halfway between that and the poetic language of someone like Ray Bradbury, but also with the deep deep worldbuilding of Neal Stephenson, but even harder to follow than him. Maybe it didn't help that I was listening on audiobook. If I did it all over I would do a hard copy for sure.

It's hard to know how to rate this book. I loved the worldbuilding but I didn't really love the experience of reading it as a whole. I understand that this was a pivotal moment for birthing cyberpunk. However, the author didn't coin the phrase, didn't affiliate himself with it, and probably honestly didn't really love the movement that was birthed following his famous book. Also, the afterward written by a friend of Gibsons didn't really help; wow that guy is pretentious. I hope Gibson isn't as bad; I haven't researched him well enough to know though.

For these reasons and more, I personally wonder whether Neuromancer being published was really necessary for the movement to be birthed; I view it as more inevitable. Scifi had for a long time been begging for an exploration of the different ways tech could affect augmenting humans and all the identity and societal implications that are inherently really fascinating.

Either way I'm grateful that the book exists and inspired a lot of people. I don't want to hate on it at all but just thank it for being there, but also respectfully say...I'm glad that scifi has progressed since then.

Really excellent short read about how to make habit forming digital products. Loved this hook cycle and all the examples.

The ethical implications of having this knowledge is profound. He has a chapter about how you need to consider the ethics, including a really interesting four quadrants chart about the ethics of manipulation. Clearly one quadrant is definitely ethical and ideally we would always develop products this way, and one is definitely not. The other two are problematic in different ways which he explains.

But my question is: did Nir consider the ethics of making this book? How many of his readers are going to make ethical vs non ethical products? If the negative results outweigh the positive, wouldn't it have been better for him to have never published this book to begin with? Normally I'm all about publishing information but my perception is that the vast majority of apps are not being developed altruistically. The vast majority of social media, video games, and certain other categories of apps definitely have a much more negative effect on society than positive. There are some categories that are more positive and many that are neutral. I don't know. As a software engineer myself, this whole question has had me in a quandary for a while.

Sentient spiders as protagonists?? As soon as I heard that, I knew I had to read a book with a premise that whacky. That and, it's by Tchaikovsky, whose misery-fest-of-a-book Cage of Souls was absolutely delightful in a way that only tortured souls like myself can understand. And who has the zoology chops to pull off a book like this, to help you actually get into the perspective of totally other life forms.

So anyways: yes: spiders. I know. But listen, really. He really masterfully thought through what a civilization would be like, its different levels as it advances through the ages, and how they would communicate differently, think differently, and form different gender roles and different hierarchies in their society because of their underlying biology and evolution. Masterful is the only word for it.

And I found myself actually caring about these (believe it or not!) spider characters. And you just might too.

There are also some interesting plot things going on with the humans, who are seriously messed up in the head, I have to say. Different megalomaniacs and brilliant people starved of sunlight and anything good and natural for generations on these worldships, and their society descending into barbarism...and a few of their leaders making themselves live forever with cryosleep...developing a mythos and cult around them...wow. Quite interesting. Merging organic consciousness with artificial intelligence...really great stuff in here.

Please don't let the spiders turn you off. Give it a try, honestly, because Adrian Tchaikovsky is in my opinion one of the most brilliant worldbuilding minds in science fiction out there today. He's an global treasure, an expert in zoology, and he will teach you way more about animals and evolution than you'll learn in any other science fiction book. Same can be said for Cage of Souls, which also had some interesting ideas about evolution. Tchaikovsky is a seriously underrated author. For my taste at least.

I should mention that I think his characters are perhaps not for everyone. They are frequently miserable souls, bewildered, uncertain, tortured, surrounded by sociopaths and narcissists and various other assorted chocolates insane people on all sides...the protagonists' nobility lies in them being relatively normal and not being terrible people compared to those around them. They're just trying to survive, mostly. But they're also intelligent. Thank God for protagonists that don't advance the plot through being morons! Thank you. So yes, his protagonists really work for me.

I don't know how it is that I never managed to give this a review at the time that I read it a few months ago! Funny how that works sometimes: when I'm blazing through a book to get to the finish line because it's so good, then after I get there, I take a break from thinking about it. But then later in following weeks, it comes back for me to think about.

For this book, it's the spiders I think about a lot, all the challenges they overcome (it's really like their civilization itself is a hero that you want to triumph). And I think particularly about their interesting cities, which are basically skyscrapers built on massive trees, with huge vast webs connecting them. Their tech tree evolves so much differently than ours; they never invented the wheel but they got to radios and lasers way faster than we did.

I really can't wait to read the rest of this series. There's the fate of the human race hanging in the balance. This isn't much of a spoiler really, more like just the premise of the whole dang trilogy, but basically the humans have run out of options and the one planet that's looking good and inhabitable is also the one with the giant spider civilization. Spoilers ahead but: in the first book they have a brief encounter; basically it's a horror scene for the humans. It's great. In the second book it looks like there's going to be a lot more interaction between the two civilizations and I can't wait to see what happens. And/or explore other planets/colonies as well, not sure if that's coming.

Just read the book.

This has good advice based on clear case studies.

Most interesting highlights:
1. Big companies ignore smaller segments to their detriment; the company that focuses on a niche market and does really well with them will then expand outward to the more generic market and kill the competition. Big companies want to move on markets that already exist but you can't know anything about a market that doesn't exist yet.
2. Disruptive markets are the ones where first mover's advantage matters the most
3. There is no market data, there is no hard numbers, there's none of that when you're dealing with a new emerging market
4. Discovery-based planning: this is when you assume the market forecasts are wrong, not right
5. As the products in a new market evolve, the customers' main desires that drive their purchasing decisions go from functionality to reliability to convenience to price. Once you're competing based on price you are making low margins and can only win through economies of scale and things like that.
6. Almost all large companies are terrible places to do discovery of new projects; it will always be an uphill battle of people asking why that project needs to exist at all because it's such a small portion of the pie, it doesn't match with a large company's growth needs.
7. Normally the only times a large company fosters a new innovative product successfully is when the CEO himself (or someone nearly as important) makes it their personal vision and mission to make it happen at all costs, and even then it's just a one time deal. Like Steve Jobs pushing Apple to make the iPhone even though it cannabalized iPod.
8. Johnson and Johnson is an interesting case study, the exception to the rule. It manages 160 completely autonomous companies

There's good stuff in here. But some of the advice is old news, the case studies are ancient history, and it's also written clearly for a target audience of middle managers at big stuffy corporations that don't understand how innovation works in the least. You know, the kind of companies that are dinosaurs; huge but ultimately irrelevant because they probably won't be around twenty years from now. Finally, the tone was too corporate to be engaging.

I'm still begrudgingly glad I read this and at least it had the blessed strength of not being as overly long as most nonfiction is.

If you want to learn startup thinking, Tony Fadell is one of the best people to learn from. Not only are his stories quite illuminating, from building the iPod to the iPhone to General Magic to Nest, but he's also a great teacher, and good at taking his many many life lessons and generalizing them in an intelligent way and seeing how they fit into the bigger picture and how they can be made useful to the reader.

This book is at once an autobiography and a reference material of different topics for learning how to think like a startup founder and how to navigate through various situations: whether you're trying to start up a new thing inside an existing company or you're starting your own company from scratch or you're trying to figure out how to scale your product/business up in each successive phase of its development, it's all here. It's just one man's experience but it's really insightful.

It's longer than other startup books because it's more comprehensive, so to anyone interested in this world I recommend starting with different books depending on who you are. This book is longer and narrative, Zero to One is of short-ish-to-moderate length but really excellent for laying the foundation of why startup thinking is so different from typical product design, and I also always recommend Start With Why, which is very short, supremely important to understanding how the world works in general, and will excite your visionary drive that we all have inside us.

Other excellent books about building new products include Hooked and The Mom Test. I have a whole shelf labeled “startups” for more.

Really good stuff explaining the Netflix culture and how you can step your way into that system gradually. And when you shouldn't.

The only problems with this book are that it's too repetitive and Netflix spends a bit too much time tooting it's own horn. Yep, we get it...you're super awesome, you have all these awards. That's not the horse you need to beat to death.

This was a good book with a really interesting idea at the center of it. The idea is the Flow, a network of faster-than-light pathways through space that facilitate intergalactic trade. All of the pathways converge on an world called Hub, and one of them ends at a world called End. From End, you go back to Hub, the beginning. You see, the Flow has pathways that only go in one direction. And so, it takes a long time to get from Hub to End, but a very short period to get from End to Hub.

This concept is then applied to economics and politics and cultures and religion and more, and the results are just awesome.

But you learn all that gradually while hurtling through action and adventure. So yes, it's a good book, just for the sheer fact that he so masterfully interweaves awesome worldbuilding stuff with fast plot.

The main thing that keeps it from being a perfect read for me is that most of the characters feel like caricatures. They have interesting composition and have some funny shticks and that helps a little, but honestly they're two dimensional at best, and they don't change.

With that said, this was still a page turner, I still really liked it and want to read the next one, it just isn't my favorite because of my desire for deeper character.

Some good concepts in here but for most of this book I was bored.

There's something about the way that most Christian fiction is written that I find very unsatisfying. One of the main things is that I find the way that the protagonists pray and talk about God and quite scriptures to be inauthentic and unrelatable.

I have to give this five stars just for the concept alone. It's a good fundamental truth that explains a lot of mysteries in the business world as well as life in general. It makes sense on so many levels and it's really, really, incredibly helpful for orienting you towards what is meaningful in life, staying aligned to your North star, and achieving long-term success instead of just short-term results. I'm really glad I read this book and I hope I continue to start with my why for the rest of my life. So in short, yes, I have drunk the kool-aid alllll the way. But I really do believe in this concept, from a philosophical perspective. If I'm not doing things that align with my passion, with my “why”, with what matters most to me–then there's really no point in living at all. And I mean that quite literally. Being a walking zombie is even worse than being dead, it really is. So. This book is one of the most important things I've ever read.

The one thing I'll critique is that it's twice as long as it needs to be. It's repetitive. But that's forgivable.

This was the most actually motivating motivational book I have ever read. It really lit a fire under me. And that is quite remarkable; normally anything remotely motivational makes me vomit. But this book, this book.

The author names and defines Resistance. The thing that holds you back from writing. The thing that is endlessly creative, endlessly stubborn, that wants nothing more than for you to not write. Or not to whatever the great important thing is that you are meant to do.

In fact, while this book is superficially about writing, this book really has nothing to do with writing, and everything to do with the fact that anything worth doing is hard. If you don't have resistance, then that means what you're doing doesn't matter. Only things that really matter have resistance. For you it could be painting, founding a non-profit, raising whole and healthy children, overcoming an addiction, engineering an invention, any number of things, but one thing is certain: it will be hard.

This book is written in many chapters and each chapter is one single page. The chapters are topics or vignettes or examples, each bite-sized but powerful. It's perfect to read one chapter a day and get yourself motivated to go write! Put your butt in the seat and do it!

I feel like this book is actually, in my experience, the single most important book for a writer. You have to name the problem and visualize the enemy in order to get focused and intentional and overcome that enemy. Before reading this book and naming that enemy, I constantly floundered with procrastinating writing. After, everything changed. Not saying I don't have my days, but...really. It was a huge mindset shift. I plan to re-read this book every year. I also bought an extra copy and gave it to an aspiring writer friend of mine who's going through a hard time.

Don't do it because it's easy, my friend...do it because it's hard.

Solid autobiography. He's honest about his family and other people in his life without it feeling like he's being dramatic–just honest. The best part of this is him sharing his experience with acting, his approach to the career, showing how the craft works, etc. Really enjoyed it. The author narrates the audiobook version, as well, really good.

A riveting story, and a great place to start if you're interested in the world of North Korean defectors. One reason that it's a great place to start is that this is written by the defector themself, not a journalist or someone else. Another reason is that Hyeonseo had such a variety of experiences living in NK, living in China, living in SK, and in escaping from several situations in her own story as well as helping others do the same, interacting with all kinds of different individuals and groups involved in every part of that world. And on top of that, so much of it is written in such a way that I was riveted, on the edge of my seat. She also seems to have a general understanding of the Western mindset, so she's able to explain cultural things in a way that is very illuminating, but without ever coming across as condescending or anything. She's just a great story-teller, a great teacher, and a person with such a life story that really needs to be told. I heartily recommend that anyone read this book.

The writer clearly did a ton of research. Actually maybe even too much research really, because at a certain point, you're just sifting through mountains of data on topics that were only very tangentially related to the plot. I think the author could have spent time more wisely by doing half the research and using that time to write another whole book about something else.

What's great about this book? The transcripts, word for word, of the last phone calls and emails of the crew of Fargo, their last communication before they left this planet for great void beyond. It's kind of chilling to know you are reading that. It's also interesting to see the play by play of what series of events lead up to a huge US merchant ship going down in the 21st century? By the end of it you have a pretty good idea of exactly why this happened. It's also interesting to see how the search, recovery, and investigation went as they tried to piece everything together.

What's not great? Reading about the history of the merchant marine. And the history of the coast guard. And the history of every single government agency involved. And of every single side character's mother's brother's cousin. Listen, I don't need to know, every time you introduce a new character, their life story, literally starting with childhood what led them to become a sailor, who were all the members of their family, what were their family dynamics, what kind of town did they grow up in, where do they live now, what does each of their friends think about their decision to be a sailor, like literally, please just stop. This is one of very very few books where I just started skipping massive chunks of chapters and even full chapters.

Im guessing that the author was trying to make these individuals come alive so we would care about them when they die. I think that could have been done more effectively in 1/20th the time. Just a couple of endearing details about a person can get me to care a whole lot. Mountains of information does very little to move me.

So anyways, that gripe aside, it was still an interesting book, and I would say if you are curious about how a huge ship could go missing and crash in the modern age then this is worth reading, but just feel free to skip the backstories.

Beautiful in its starkness, sudden and yet inevitable, with characters cut from glass and etched on your heart, even if you've never met such a person, you feel as if you have, because even though they feel very Korean, they're also just so human. I felt like I learned a lot about a culture without it ever being “work” to read or confusing. This is a family epic done in the very best way I've ever read, that pulled me in and affected me deeply. This made me feel things without being in the least bit saccharine. It just felt brutally honest.

And yet, nothing is perfect, I suppose. The one thing that I didn't like was the sudden, sometimes quite explicit sexual content. This author has a style where she likes to jolt you with suddenness, and it really works...but personally I would much rather not have this level of explicit information. I don't feel that that does anything for me.

So alas, I thought perhaps I was reading the perfect book, maybe I had found it. But nothing is perfect, nothing ever will be, there will always be some little wrinkle, no? And so I will keep reading, searching for that one perfect book out there...