Levi

This is one of, if not the, most engaging history book I've ever read. It also feels very complete, even-handed, and it views things from multiple dimensions. It follows the stories of two different individual people (one of the King Louis, and the other a glassmaker named Menetre) in addition to the broader descriptions. It pulls together from a huge number of sources and has many endnotes if you want to go deeper. And all this while still managing to be very engaging (sans the last fourth of the book, which is just inherently a less interesting phase of the revolution as it fizzled out and was gradually dismantled by the Thermidorians and Napoleon).

Popkin even does a good job of foreshadowing, introducing important characters and foreshadowing important events before they happening. I don't think I've ever read a history book before where I genuinely just really wanted to keep reading to find out what happened next.

He addresses many of the glaring faults of different revolutionaries and doesn't really making anyone into a saint. He addresses questions that we as modern readers would be more interested in, such as the revolutionaries' treatment of women and slaves. He also tells you which things had lasting effects hundreds of years into the future and what those affects were, which helps you understand how important certain things were, as well as which things quickly fizzled out and went nowhere. He makes the time period very fascinating, and pitches it as being a period where there was a cauldron or incubator of every idea imaginable about government and representation, etc. So many things were first tried here. You can see the seeds of communism, fascism, women's rights, the end of slavery, anti-colonialism, and so many other things here.

It's a time of great desperation and violence, where even women stage violent uprisings, often because people are starving. It's also the age of many enlightenment ideas getting tried out for the first time. It's an age of so many things. He explores at the beginning what conditions led to this era happening. He also explores why it developed the way it did, why he doesn't think the French Revolution was inevitable, and what King Louis could have done differently to avert it.

He also shows the rise of Napoleon, although this book isn't primarily about him, but it's a good introduction to his character and importance to ending the French Revolutionary period. I get a feeling this is an ideal thing to read first and then launch into reading a more detailed biography of Napoleon, and/or history of the Napoleonic Wars. By the way, if you didn't know anything about Napoleon, don't get your hopes up to high. He was quite racist and authoritarian, not a hero of our time, but he is a very fascinating character in history.

There are so many other good things I could say about this book. Just read it.

My relationship with Thomas Hardy began, as I imagine it did with most people, with Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I fell in love with his poetic style and the fact that he writes primarily about ordinary working class people, not just the ultra wealthy, like so many authors who he might be compared to.

I love stories from the 1800s but there's only so much I can take of reading about self important nobility complaining about the tiniest discomforts of life. So it's been refreshing to get to know Hardy: finally we can learn what it was like to be a milk maid, or a mason, or a shepherd, what life was like for them, and the social issues of the time.

His language is also just exquisitely poetic (which makes sense, Hardy was also a prolific poet). And I also just got the sense that Hardy was a keen observer and very empathetic, the kind of person I'd actually enjoy being friends with.

So I was immediately drawn in to read more by Hardy and bought Far From the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure. So I've read middle Hardy, early Hardy, and late Hardy, in that order.

What's true of all of them is the highly poetic language and internalization of nature to an inner emotional landscape. He's also great at showing just how messed up society can be around marriage in particular, but there's class issues and sexism and other meaty things as well.

Far From the Madding Crowd is overwrought with the language. He goes overboard with always using the biggest word in the dictionary; it's like he hadn't yet learned to exercise restraint and really become perfectly balanced like in Tess.

It also has a heroine who is much less likable than the other books. And who names their daughter Bathsheba? She is admirable for being thrust into a difficult situation and rising to the occasion however.

Her foil, Gabriel Oak the shepherd on the other hand, is quite likable. The poor guy is lacking some social graces but really just wants to be of service to Bathsheba. He's also just a very interesting character, a shepherd who's more interested in astronomy than his sheep; a reader and a deep soul.

There are some other characters and love interests that create and hold a lot of tension.

As always there is some terrible fate that befalls some characters. Don't read Hardy if you want everyone to live happily ever after. He's pretty intense on the tragedy.

Overall I'm still glad I read this, but I wouldn't start here with Hardy. Start with Tess.

I was disappointed, not because these stories were terrible or anything, but I just had such high hopes based on how good that Tenth of December was/is. In this collection, I felt that Saunders failed to innovate. He used the same methods and forms as previously. A lot of similar character types. Characters even speak very similarly to each other in certain tell-tale ways.

If you want a collection of stories that continues in the very specific, unique feeling that Saunders gave in previous works, then I would recommend this. If you're expecting him to break his forms and do new things...not so much.

Wow, this was great. But I have to say.

Imagine you're talking to a friend that tells you gritty, scary war stories, a bit fantastic sometimes, but he constantly tries to convince you through every nook and crook and persuasive technique known to man that this story is REAL man, it really is real...you kind of nod along and try to believe him, but the stories are just too...well, they're too well-crafted to be real. If you've read enough literature and told enough true stories and compared the two, well, you just know that there's a huge difference in so many ways. The only way you could truly conceal the difference between a true story and a not-true story is if it was really short. Like, a few lines, tops. Once you're a page or two in, the clues accumulate, until you Just Know.

But this friend, he knows all of that, and he says yes I know all of that, but that's just the thing is, sometimes in REAL LIFE things really DO happen like that, and no one will believe you, but it really DOES. This REALLY DID happen, man.

So you go, ok, fine, whatever, maybe your'e telling me the truth. Just go ahead with your story already.

Cool, he says. So he tells you his story—which gets even more fantastic—and then at the end he says, by the way, everything I just told you is BS, none of that happened.

Then he proceeds to tell you another story that REALLY IS TRUE, MAN, and the cycle continues.

When you get to 2/3 of the way through this friend's collection of stories, he finally comes clean with you and explains (in the chapter titled Good Form) a few things. First, nothing in this whole book really “happened.” Second, bad things did happen to him in Vietnam. But the problem is, all of the actual events that happened to him are foggy and hard to pin down and he can't write a story about them that gets at the Story Truth. He delineates between Story Truth and Happening Truth and explains why he thinks it's more worthwhile to go after Story Truth and to hell with what “actually happened.”

And the thing is, I agree with him. I've talked about this many times with others.

In fact, I love that he wrote that chapter. I wish everyone who's interested in reading, and especially those interested in writing, would read it. It's really helpful and cuts through the crap quickly and I believe him.

However, it took you 2/3 of the way through the book to get to that point. I wish he would have put it at the beginning. For me at least, personally, then I wouldn't have had to combat this constant feeling of someone trying to get one over on me and then, just when they finally get me to concede that maybe I could believe them, they go HA—got you.

I think that my reaction reveals more about myself than the other, probably. Maybe. I don't know. But I'm willing to assume that.

Perhaps the author wanted to put me through the trials of being lied to and trying to figure out what is true because that's a recurring theme in his stories, he has tried to do that personally when talking to other soldiers as they tell their stories, etc. And the thing is, I can see how he played to his theme and everything.

And I like his stories. The titular first story is a classic that probably a million people have read, and rightfully so. I love it. And there are many other great stories in here, not “just another” war story, but each one kind of more than that. And there are a lot of great stories on truth, writing, etc.

But I'm still pissed about him fooling me.

When my father died, I felt keenly the loss of a language that only he and I spoke. This book is where that idea comes from: that for any deep friendship, there is a language that only the two of you speak and no one else can replace it. This is explored through several different character relationships with the same man: John Singer.

Singer is a deaf mute. Ironically, a cast of very disparate characters all feel that Singer is the one man who really understands them. These people have different ages and genders and socioeconomic backgrounds and races and religious or economic perspectives, they are all outcasts from society in their own way. When they visit Singer at the same time, they fall into awkward silence, as they have absolutely nothing in common with each other (except for their friendship with Singer). And so they visit him individually instead.

How can all these people feel that Singer is the one person in the world who truly understands them? It's a bit mysterious but perhaps part of it is that Singer is such a good listener. And there's an interesting effect at play that if a canvas is blank, we read ourselves into it. Because Singer never says anything, he never shatters that illusion.

That would be one interpretation. The other is that perhaps he does understand them all very well precisely because he focuses intently on them to the exclusion of all else, without inserting himself into the conversation. Or perhaps it's certain personality traits that he has, such as hospitality, focus, deep empathy, deep understanding. Or a combination of things.

And perhaps me trying to dissect the “how” of it detracts instead of adds. The fact is that there is something intangible to relationships. Something which defies description. With certain people you just “know” that they “get it.” And there's something intangible to art, as well, and me trying to describe what this book does falls short because it defies description. True art is ineffable.

Needless to say, because of the strong connection that this book's concepts has with my own grieving process over losing my father, I have a strong visceral connection with this book. It has caused me to reflect and helped me process the vicissitudes of life on par with what a deep philosophical book does to you, and yet this book is pure narrative, no polemic morals here. I highly recommend it to most people, unless you're one of those who needs a fast plot to stay engaged.

The characters are some of the most distinctive, and I still have a very strong feeling for all of their personalities that has stuck with me even though it's now been a few months since I read it. This is a book I look forward to returning to time and again through the years.

It's hard to know how to rate this. It is definitely an important thing to read. I have a better understanding of a lot of things now. This reads as a rallying call, especially the ending. There is also a very interesting section describing the communist party's relations to other political parties at the time. But probably the most interesting part is the beginning, the history of the world through the lens of class struggles. Marx is a master with words, and there are many passages that I noted to revisit and remember. He writes with grand, sweeping strokes that encompass huge areas. Sometimes this results in him seeming perhaps a bit too reductionist, but for the most part, somehow he gets away with it.

I think he was really onto something, but I disagree on one major point. He thought that the only possible solution for the unstable situation (where the bourgeoisie have power over the proletariat) was for the proletariat to get political power over the bourgeoisie. I think this is fundamentally too unstable. The bourgeoisie are, by definition, the proletariat's bosses. It doesn't work to be your boss's boss. Obviously, it also doesn't work for the bourgeoisie to have full power and the proletariat to starve, like what was happening across Europe in the 1840s. My theory is that the only stable solution is where the bourgeoisie and the proletariat share political power in a balance. And I think that if you look at the stable countries today–the ones that aren't dictatorships or oligarchies–they all have a mix of power being shared by these two classes.

There are no communist countries today, and perhaps never have or ever will be. The concept is fundamentally flawed in my opinion. The proletariat can't have all the political power for so many reasons. First, the bourgeoisie is naturally full of people who are good at managing, organizing, directing. That's how they got to be bourgeoisie. And they have experience on their side. The proletariat will never be able to compete in that area. Secondly, the bourgeoisie will never be content with not being in power because they are used to that. The best compromise can be to have them share their power, but to have them give it up completely? That's impossible to get them to agree to. And to simply completely do away with the bourgeoisie is also impossible. If you do get rid of them, then a new bourgeoisie rises up in their place, because someone has to manage. Marx advocated for centralizing power over capital in the state. In his model, the state simply becomes the new bourgeoisie. All of the bureaucrats that the state hires to run everything are now the new bourgeoisie and the same old problems arise. It just shuffles around the players.

Anyways. A totally different tact to take is to think about how to apply all of this to the modern world, which is quite a bit different from 180 years ago. In first world countries today, I don't know that the breakdown of proletariat and bourgeoisie really applies perfectly well to our society. I think our class system has gotten a lot more complex than that. And in some ways we have really gotten rid of a class system...but not entirely. I don't really have bandwidth to dive into trying to define such a system myself, but would be interested to read about it if anyone knows of a good model they have run across.

Thomas Hardy was a great craftsman in the art of writing, and this book is no exception. I love his use of poetic language and how he applies it to characters and their experiences.

I really loved this book's feel from the beginning, of this obscure boy who nobody wanted who communed with the stars and dreamed of going to Christminster (Hardy's alias for Oxford). I love how Hardy explores obscure people's lives and gives them meaning. In addition to being that, this work also feels a bit autobiographical (just guessing).

This book is a direct critique, if not outright attack, on the institution of marriage. I was surprised to read in some of the reviews that there was question as to whether it was moralistic or not. To my eyes it was quite straightforwardly so. The primary moral, which is quite explicitly put forth in great detail by the two main characters, is that it is harmful to prevent married people from divorcing (or making it so very onerous as it was in Hardy's day, regarding the way that society would treat you afterwards).

Besides that moral, there are several other related morals that are less forcefully brought up, and may be considered more as general critiques of how culture handles marriage. It points out that people get married without really knowing what they're doing and for all the wrong reasons, pressure from society, being outright tricked (I'm pregnant...jk), guilt, for appearances, etc. It points out that marrying can have negative effects on one's love (feelings) for their spouse. It points out that in some circumstances, if you have lived together for long enough and acted married for long enough, it really seems more natural and substantive to consider that person to be married to you rather than someone who you may be married to on paper but haven't seen in years.

It also shows (and this I found to be valuable) how cruel that society could be in that time toward people who flaunted traditional marriage customs. In one scene, Jude and his not-wife are repairing some stone masonry in a church, in particular, a ten commandments edifice. When some passersby happen upon them doing their work and begin discussing rumors about the couple, this escalates to a certain point, and then the parson has to fire them—not for having done anything wrong, but just for appearance's sake. He does kindly pay them for the rest of the weeks' work. But I can imagine how I would feel in that circumstance. There are several other scenes that show them being denied employment and lodging, which affects not just them, but their children, to very cruel effect. It feels quite realistic and I wonder if that is why this book pissed off so many people.

That's a theme that I see in all of Thomas Hardy's books that I have read so far: how cruel society can be, how it can even threaten the very survival of people who aren't conforming to the conventions which are dictated by popular moral ideas. I love Thomas Hardy for exploring that theme. I'm a Christian who, instead of shrinking away from such uncomfortable discussions, wants to lean into them; I find them incredibly important.

My parents divorced when I was 12. It had been a miserable marriage for quite some time leading up till that point. I won't go into all the details, but suffice it to say, as someone who spends inordinate amounts of time contemplating matters like these, I feel 100% confident that life was better for everyone. Unless an act of God happened, that marriage was not going in a positive direction.

By nature, as a child, I was an idealist. I didn't want my parents to get divorced, and I felt a sense of wrongness. However, experience has a way of beating down your ideals sometimes. Enough pain over enough time doesn't necessarily destroy the ideal, it just forces you to accept that the ideal isn't always a sensible thing to pursue.

So anyways. I don't approach this question from some naive perspective, happy to hand-wave at others' suffering as I hold fast to dogma. That's not where I'm coming from at all. What I am is a seeker of Truth. I really want to know what the Truth is, what Truths can be learned about life and can be applied to questions like these. I'm married right now, have been for 7 years. It's either the most difficult thing I've ever done or the second most (apples and oranges are hard to compare). And this has caused me to examine in an intensely personal philosophic way: what is the purpose of marriage? When is divorce actually helpful?

Here's what I took away from Hardy's book.

It's a broken system when divorced people are treated worse than married people. My dad couldn't be a deacon in his church simply because he was divorced. There were stigmas toward my mother. There were stigmas toward my family, at my Christian school. It could have been worse. It wasn't like what Hardy described. But I can get behind this idea of his. It simply is harmful; I don't see a benefit.

I spent some time trying to write about and give my opinions on several other topics related to divorce and marriage, and then quickly discovered I was in over my head. Having thrown away those paragraphs, I will summarize thus. I think Thomas Hardy brings up a lot of real problems with how society handled marriage and divorce, esp in that day, and a couple of fake problems which I thought were red herrings. I also think the book would have benefited from examining the other side of the coin; he never anticipated the counter-arguments and tried to address them, and never gave counter-examples. Where are the happily married couples, or the people who grew to love each other more over time? Curiously, none of those people exist in Hardy's world. So I didn't find it to be a thorough treatment of the theme.

However, with that said, I think it has a lot of valuable food for discussion and critical reasoning on the topic of marriage and for that reason alone it is a very worthwhile work. It may be that Hardy wasn't trying to present the other side of the coin because he was writing for a very different audience that was incensed or outraged at things that today are non-problems; their reactions seem bizarre to us. Back then divorce was scandalous to the point of being practically a non-option for most people if they didn't want to ruin their lives. It wasn't illegal...it was just that all the societal consequences you would face would be drastic enough to ruin you. That's not true choice; just the illusion of it. So maybe it made a lot more sense for Hardy to treat the subject that way; he was really trying to make an unpopular point for (in some ways) the first time. So his non-thoroughness can be forgiven.

Today I think our culture is in a very different place, where divorce is often turned to quickly, or even assumed at the onset of marriage. I think a lot of people have lost track of the value of marriage as an instrument for becoming a better person. People have also become less used to pain and difficulty, and no longer see it as the good thing that it truly is. When I'm going through “another fucking growth opportunity,” yes, I don't have a good attitude often. But in the big picture, this does not change my philosophy on life. I know from countless experiences that I must embrace pain in order to grow, and avoiding pain only causes me to stagnate.

Anyways. There is so much that could be written on this subject and I am certainly not ready to do a thorough treatment of it. So I will stop trying for now and instead simply say that this book by Hardy is good, it is poetic and makes some good points if a bit moralistically in parts, but on the whole it is not so moralistic, but rather just quite focused on showing every problem with the institution of marriage (as implemented in his society) that Hardy could muster. It is also sad, to the point of being depressing in parts. Particularly gruesome is the child suicide/homicide.

Also, I almost forgot to mention one of the themes was the difficulty in being allowed to get a higher education if you weren't born into privilege. I took great interest in seeing how a no-name stonemason would go about trying to get educated in this time period if he were particularly determined. This book answers that question. Spoiler: it sucked.

I am very sorry that he received such intense backlash in his day from this book to the point that he quit writing novels (yes, that was the reason he gave, whether that was a cop-out excuse or not we will never know). I disagree with Hardy on many points about marriage (at least what I think his points were), but I never would have attacked or censored someone for writing a book eloquently making a case that I disagreed with. I'm glad he wrote it and shook up Victorian sensibilities. I'm sad there were no more books after this one.

It shouldn't have been so controversial as it was. And by that I just mean that I'm against censorship in all its forms. Arguing about controversial topics is essential. Unfortunately, though, most people, when discussing a controversial topic, just resort to dogma instead of a reasoned conversation. I would have loved to engage with Hardy on this topic or any other. I think he was a great man, a reasonable man, and one of those few souls who were gifted with intelligence and compassion in equal measures. Perhaps I'll meet him in the afterlife and we can argue it out there.

The theme is coloniasm, and it gets applied in interesting, thought-provoking ways outside of the box. The writing is very good.

The only thing I didn't like is that two of the points of view (out of six) are characters that are pretentious and insufferable, especially with their overwrought and absurd diction, showing off with ridiculous words and metaphors. It felt overdone and for whatever reason made my eyes roll instead of feeling enjoyable.

With that said, that fades away as the book gets going and the second half doesn't have that style as much.

The plots are good, the stories are interesting, it's all done very well otherwise. This book has a very interesting structure where there are six stories being told. All of them (except the middle one) are split into two parts. So Story A is split into two with its first half being the first thing you read in the whole book, and the second half being the last thing you read in the book. Inside of that you have Story B, and inside of B you have C, all the way to F in the middle. So like a sextuple-decker sandwich.

Also, story A is chronologically the oldest in time, and F is the most advanced in time (it's post apocalytpic...ish...more like post post apocalyptic...it's interesting).

Everything this author did with all of these stories managed to be original and engaging. It's familiar themes and ideas but always arranged in an interesting way. This is what I look for in a literary book. It was quite compelling.

I liked this collection of plays even better than the more well-known collection of Sophocles' plays that Oxford prints (which had the three plays Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone).

1. Ajax

I read this as basically the story about how a great, renowned person can have a great life, but then end it poorly if he allows himself to be eaten up by entitlement and a desire for revenge. Ajax goes literally insane at the end of his life, ends up committing degrading acts, and when he realizes what he has done, he (you guessed it) kills himself (as is mandatory in all Greek tragedies). Others are angry at him and briefly consider disrespecting his body (by not burying it) but, this is wrong to do even to one's enemies, and so they do consent to bury it. There is a really good peaceful bittersweet ending to how Ajax dies.

But with that said, I'm not going to go into as much detail on this play, mostly because I just want to get to the other three.

2. Women of Trachis

This should really have been called Deianeira. It's the story of the jilted wife, who has gotten older and lost some of the beauty of her youth, her husband (Heracles) is always away, and then (in this case) he sends home a recently captured younger woman, Iole, to be his new concubine (basically). Unfortunately, when Deianeira first meets Iole, she takes pity on Iole and promises to take good care of her, before realizing exactly who Iole is to her husband. She is a woman of her word though.

This is an under-told story, if I can make up that word. I'm surprised at how many good proto-feminist stories that Sophocles told. It really focuses on the pain of Deianeira and I found myself really feeling for her. I felt for Iole, too, who had no choice in the matter.

But then on top of that pain, Deianeira makes a mistake. She uses a supposed magic potion on her husband (indirectly, by applying it to part of a robe that she sends to Heracles to wear). However, when Heracles wears it and the potion comes into contact with his chest, it eats away at it and slowly kills him; it's literally eating his heart out. He thinks she intentionally tried to kill him. She discovers what has happened and that she was tricked by the person who gave her this “magic potion,” a centaur who was actually enacting a final act of vengeance when he gave it to her.

When she realizes what she has done (she has actually killed the very person that she was trying to draw close to her), she kills herself (as all Greek tragedies are mandated to end). This story just really strikes so close to home. This is a universal powerful truth. When we try to control others it usually backfires and we get the very opposite of what we wanted. It also burns especially to have insult added to injury because she was already in such a terrible position. To be so terribly treated by someone but to still love them and want them to love you–that's a hard thing that many people have experienced. I am filled with empathy for these stories.

These are the kind of stories that need to be told more. When I was a kid I was told the myths that appealed to boys/men, but there are myths that were written that appeal much more to the experience of girls/women. We need to bring this part of our cannon much more to the forefront, alongside the others.

3. Electra

This is one of the best stories that I have read of Sophocles so far. I say this despite the fact that Electra, the hero, is really quite un-empathetic in many ways. Her father, King Agamemnon, was murdered by her mother and her affair partner who then became her new husband afterwards. To add insult to injury, Electra has then had to live with her mother and step-father for years and years. She has never stopped grieving for her father, which has made them very angry with her, and she's almost never allowed to leave the house, etc.

She has been waiting all of these years for her brother to grow up in a distant city and then come back and avenge her father's death. The play is largely about that happening, and when he does get revenge on both perpetrators at the end, it's satisfying–although it's interesting, the revenge actually happens off camera: you hear it happening instead of seeing it, but somehow this only makes it more riveting. It actually feels like there are elements of horror in this play.

It has traces of Antigone. Again, you have a young woman who loves her brother greatly and who is grieving a family member who has been killed and disrespected, and continues to grieve them in the morally right way despite that having majorly negative consequences for herself. She's not as relatable as Antigone because she is still grieving after maybe 20 years or something, and one can see her being annoying about it. When her mother comes on scene and you hear about why she killed her husband, you actually start to relate to her mother a bit–although you still don't “root” for her, you are able to at least understand her perspective.

In fact, this play really doesn't have a “side” almost, even though there's the very obvious “side” of Electra and her brother Orestes getting revenge on Electra's mother and stepfather, at the same time, every single character is actually humanized, their perspective is shown in such a way that you can understand them a little. The stepfather is perhaps the least relatable. But you really get a taste of pretty much all of the characters. And when the revenge finally happens, it's not portrayed as some positive healing thing...I interpreted it as being portrayed as a horrific fact.

Electra shows a different side of herself when interacting with several different people. She's almost a series of reactions to other people. She doesn't change up through the end of the play; she never seems to come to the realization that revenge will not heal her.

All the same...it's hard to explain why, but there's just something about this play that is different. It's not a typical tragedy. But it's not really a celebration of revenge either. Electra's love of her brother Orestes is something appealing. It also has some of the best actual action of any of the plays, including a really good telling of a chariot race. It's funny how good that that mini-story is, because, that whole story is just fabricated to give the soon-to-be victims a misplaced sense of ease at thinking that Orestes has died (and so not guess the truth, which is that Orestes has actually come back to avenge his father on them this very day).

I will need to re-read this play a few times to understand why I liked it so much. I'm sorry I can't give better explanations as to why, yet.

4. Philoctetes

This guy was annoying because again, throwing a pity party, lame (which is why I don't enjoy the two Oedipus plays as much as I should). But there was more to this one. There is Philoctetes, whom Odysseus is trying to trick into coming back to help them with the Trojan war, or, failing that, to at least steal his magical bow (given to him by the gods). But there is a third character, Neoptolemus, who Odysseus uses to try and trick Philoctetes.

Neoptolemus is the more interesting character, he's younger but also jaded, he relates to Philoctetes a lot, and he changes his mind a couple of times and actually helps Philoctetes (by giving back his bow to him), even to their detriment, and respects Philoctetes' decision to still not help them. And he's willing to fight Odysseus and all the Greeks over this. He also tries to persuade Philoctetes, but he's not going to fight him to force his way. He seems much more motivated by empathy and much more capable of gaining perspective than any of the other Greek characters I've read about thus far. I really like him.

There's also a classic Ex Deus Machina at the end, a literal god-in-the-machine, as Heracles shows up in glory and convinces Philoctetes to go with them. Some people dislike this, but when I read it, I actually viewed it as the grace of God that sometimes forces us to change even though we know it's going to be painful and we don't want to do it, all the while knowing it's going to be good for us. Sometimes God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. I think of stories like Jonah. I'm glad for Philoctetes that God pushed him out of his comfort zone, and glad for the times in my life and others when God has done that.

Conclusion: these plays are more readable, to me, than the more popular ones of Sophocles that I have read. Of all Sophocles' plays, my favorites are:
Antigone
Women of Trachis
Electra
Ajax
Philoctetes

So, 4/5 are in this volume. I will say, there are some parts of the Greek tragedy that make it not necessarily my favorite genre. But there is a lot of poetic and life depth to it. I want to continue to re-read these five plays in the years to come and continue to mine their depths.

This is the least well-known book of Jane Austen's, as well as the last typical of her style. But, aside from the fact that I had to adjust my expectations, I enjoyed it greatly.

This is a farce. It's clearly how romances are NOT supposed to go; there are set-ups and then an unexpected curve balls that makes you laugh.

The heroine is obsessed with low-brow novels and wants to see horror in every detail of this ancient abbey she is exploring. She is capital-R Romantic in a very realistic world where she looks a tad ridiculous. I could see myself in her.

She's also socially awkward and often doesn't know what to do; it's all very comedic, a fun story. And by the end, we do still get a satisfying ending typical of a Jane Austen novel.

There is a lot of breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the reader. At first this jarred me, but I got used to it, especially because sometimes it was quite funny, although it wasn't always used to comedic effect. Unfortunately, after a time it came to feel overdone for my tastes. That was the main detractor for me that caused this to drop a little in the ranks below Austen's other works.

Something very strange about this work is that it felt as if perhaps, just maybe, Austen was actually bending over backward to be critical of women in a way that would line up with chauvinistic values? I don't have the full context of how Austen thought, nor do I have the full benefit of understanding the culture of the Regency period in order to discern how certain comments and criticisms are meant to be taken. So take that with a grain of salt.

But there is still a lot here to love. The characterizations of several people, the way she subtly makes fun of everyone simply through characterizing them so well, etc. I'm very glad I read it and look forward to revisiting it throughout the years.

Lots of wisdom here. Sometimes pretty repetitious. I don't see Seneca as a hypocrite like others do. I think people like to tear down anyone who sets high standards. Seneca didn't claim to be perfect, just to be striving for an ideal. And compared to his contemporaries, he went far towards it.

Unfortunately I can't completely get behind his ideal–at least, not the way he goes about it. The “way” which I refer to is that he simply tries to control and stifle emotions. I believe in his ideal of not allowing emotions to rule us. But the path to that, I think, goes through actually feeling and dealing with your emotions, not simply trying to deny that they exist. Of course in all fairness, Seneca was over a thousand years before any kind of understanding of how emotions work had been done. So he shouldn't be faulted for that.

Why should you read this? Because he's a master essayist, for one. These are really essays wrapped in an “epistolary” (letter-like) form. He's a master of style and full of thought-provoking ideas. And above all else, you should read this because Seneca believed in philosophy as a means of improving how one lived. It's clear he would staunchly oppose today's philosophers, for he makes it clear that philosophy is degraded when it devolves into philology (the study of words) or when it becomes divorced from how to improve one's self; that is, is theory only. In this respect, he is a man after my own heart.

The voice is of an old crotchety man, but one who is effective, transparent, and wise. I feel like I'm talking to my (now deceased) grandfather who was a retired professor. This voice is dear to my heart and I'm sure I will be returning to it again and again.

And now for some excerpts on what Seneca had to say about various topics.

Grief
He writes a letter to Lucilius after the latter has experienced the loss of a close friend. Seneca's advice varies considerably. At one point he says that the ideal is to not grieve at all, but concedes that this is not possible.

At another point he says that it is good that a stoic should shed a few tears, but not too many, because carrying on and making great displays of grief is not really about the person you are grieving. He has observed that most people who make huge displays of grief did not, in fact, spend any time with the friend in life. They are making large overtures of grief to convince others–or themselves–that they really did care for the person.

Absence in friendship
He says that being absent from a friend is a finer pleasure than being present with them. He also espouses letters over talking in person. He says to take stock of: how often when you live in proximity to a friend do you actually see them? You allow great stretches of time to go by without seeing them at all. But when absent from a friend, one is more intentional.

Death
“You will die not because of illness, but because you are alive.”
Caligula once was passing by a slave who asked to be put to death. “So then,” he said, “You are alive, as you are now?”
“[Everything is slavery.] Life itself is slavery, if the courage to die is lacking.”
Don't seek for longevity of life. “Length does not matter; only, have a good ending.”

Fear of Death
He insists that people are mainly afraid of death because they don't want to lose the delicatessens, the pleasures of life. And yet haven't you already spent your whole life sampling these pleasures thousands of times? There is nothing new to be gained there.

He also states repeatedly that he is not afraid of death because it is either a transition or an end. And even if it is an end, it is simply to cease to exist, and he already was in that state before he was born.

Death - my Response
He has a lot of great points, but taken as a whole, I feel his stance on death starts to feel a little hollow. First of all, there is always more to be accomplished in life, not merely the sampling of new pleasures. There are always new books to write, friendships to deepen, places to see, things to learn. Children and grandchildren to watch grow up. Deeds to do worth doing.

Second, if death is to cease to exist, then there could be nothing worthwhile about it. One cannot learn or grow or affect things or be affected. One has absolutely nothing if one does not exist.

And if death is a transition, the problem is that it is a transition into the complete unknown. Nothing is more natural than to fear the unknown–this does not mean one should be ruled by that fear–but it is completely natural.

A man who does not fear death is a fool, perhaps, I say, for he either pretends to feel no fear or, worse, actually doesn't feel it in the most natural of situations, which would indicate something was fundamentally ill in his psyche.

Very useful concept and lots of practical tips on how to implement it. Explains the concept of deep work, why it's so important to understand in the current knowledge economy, how to distinguish it from shallow work, how much you should strive to have in a given work week, how to negotiate that with your boss and environment, and what counter balancing measures you will need to ensure that other stuff gets done and you don't lose your sanity (meditation and mindfulness become even more important). I highly recommend this to engineers, artists, and anyone with a job that demands focus and creativity.

This book had plenty of interesting and original ideas and even some of the most interesting cultures I've ever seen in science fiction.

You have The Culture, which we can imagine as the ultimate end of a very liberal culture where people are free to do almost anything they please, where people pursue every pleasure imaginable and freedom reigns. Supposedly a paradise until you look at the seedy underbelly; a glorious iteration on Huxley's “Brave New World” types of culture.

Then you have the Idirans: three-legged predators in keratinous armor, large and imposing, savage and religious, and surprisingly wise in certain respects. The backdrop of the book is the ongoing war between the Idirans and the Culture, in which our protagonist Horza plays a critical role.

The plot mostly takes place on a planet that would have been a backwater of no note, except for that one of the Culture's great “Minds” (an enormous AI of epic proportions and capabilities) crashes and hides there. Immediately a race is on for the Idirans to try and get access to this proprietary and technology that could change the tide of the war. So that's the premise of the plot.

Along the way, there are epic space battles and huge cities and space ships and epic happenings in space and on strange planets and islands. There's a cult and there's some really grotesque things that happen; be warned. This is a book where you kind of hang onto the edge of your seat at certain points, so I won't give away any major plot points except to say: this isn't your fairy tale type of ending.

In fact, at the end of it, I was left wondering: what was the point of any of that? There isn't a clear side to root for, and none of the protagonists are traditional heroes.

I had a hard time caring too much about the main character. The changer species is interesting, but Horza just seems...there's nothing about him that drew me to him. He seemed mostly self-interested and logical. I didn't get a sense of much heart or many endearing qualities or seeing much of his humanity. And at the end, he dies, so...it makes me wonder what was the whole point of his story at all?

It certainly doesn't seem a happy ending for him. On the other hand, I can't really label this a “tragedy” story; it just doesn't have the tragedic arc. It seems there is no clear story arc for the story as a whole, because the same “meh” feeling is there for the other character arcs as well.

I found myself mostly rooting for Yelsin and Balvada (sp?). Yelsin dies in the end and Balvada goes into hibernation for hundreds of years, just to wake up and kill herself. Ok. Again, what's the point?

Reading the book description again, I think the author's point was probably an underlying nihilistic philosophy. Nothing matters, there is no meaning in life, and he wanted to write a story to reflect that. Unfortunately, that doesn't make for good story-telling. I have read books that had a nihilistic theme to it but were still more satisfying to read.

Maybe the point was more the “war is hell” theme. With those books I'm usually looking for a survival story, where I'm rooting for the heroes to survive. This starts to feel like that, but, again, in the end everyone dies, so still—not very satisfying as a war story.

The worldbuilding was very interesting, plot points pretty original or at least nuanced, pace was fast enough for me. So this deserves a few stars for those things alone. I did finish it. I just...yeah. Not only am I unsure what the point of the story was, I'm unsure even what themes he was trying to get across. It seems muddled.

It reads almost like a history in some ways, like he's trying to show all the complexities of a “real” historical account. I think he was going for a sense of realism (albeit while being science fiction set hundreds or thousands of years in the future). He succeeded at that.

But, while there were many of the technical requirements of a space opera (space battles, big space ships, huge planet-changing things happening, a motley crew...), it didn't have any of the feeling of romanticism and magic that a space opera should have in my mind.

In summary, I would say it's at least an interesting read if for the reason that it's original if nothing else. Glad I read it once; probably won't read it again. But since this is only the first published work of Iain Banks and the cultures are intriguing, I will probably continue at some point.

I really loved Antigone but the other two (Oedipus the King and oedipus at Colonus) less so. To be honest, Sophocles seems to be all about melodrama; these read like soap operas for a general audience. He uses tons of idioms. I wonder if he was coining these idioms for the first time, like Shakespearre, or if he was just using tons of tropes and was an unoriginal bore. There are a few beautiful passages and thoughts in the first two.

I thought that Antigone was particularly well-written–beautiful, and full of meaning about what is truly moral when one's own morals are opposed by the dictates of the state.

Themes:
- the ethics of the individual vs the state (Antigone vs Creon)
- the ethics of the dictator vs his people (Creon vs everyone else)
- honoring one's family vs the state

Also this translation seems to be stellar (although I'm not an expert on the original Greek or anything so not fully qualified here, but to my layman's eyes, these feel like really good translations).

Repeat information if you've read TMMO, but has a very different voice, so could still be useful to some people who prefer a lighter touch or who are younger.

What Sanderson does best, I think, is worldbuilding. There are many different kingdoms and species and a whole world of stone and intense storms with a rich ecosystem that's different than our own in several important ways. He actually reveals this massive and complex world in such a gradual way that for a while I was a little bit miffed because it was giving me a sensation of feeling that it was all disjointed, random, that none of this fit into a cohesive system, but towards the end of the book connections started to be made. Now I think I see what he's doing, and I'm really looking forward to reading more of his books and making more connections.

For instance, he has a whole system of “spren”...there are these little bright lights, kind of like will-o-wisps or something like that, but there are many different kinds that show up for many different events...windspren, firespren, painspren, gloryspren, anticipationspren...yes some of these are kind of silly and unwieldy. And for the most part these spren are for show only; they can't interact with the material world in any meaningful ways at first glance...but there are two major exceptions to this.

First there's one windspren in particular who forms a relationship with Kaladin and who forms an actual personality and memories, something unique is happening here. Second, towards the end of the book you start to find out what scientists have discovered while studying spren and there are hints that understanding them actually is linked to technological innovations. So, this becomes a very interesting rich area in Roshar, the world of these books.

Ok, the book as a whole. Strengths, worldbuilding, and pacing. There's always something to look forward to. So even though the book is massive, there are mostly lots of really short chapters that nicely segue into the next one, plenty of surprises, plenty of satisfying things.

Prose is fine, rarely elegant or quite beautiful, but not bad or annoying. Description is sparser than my taste, but I imagine is preferable for most readers. Characters are moderately deep, but this isn't Flannery O'Connor or anything. On the spectrum of character-heavy to plot-heavy, I would put this in the middle, a little more on the plot end, but honestly, it's more like he decided that he wanted to do heavy plot and character and worldbuilding and just let the book be massive. He then compensates for the insane length by being a master of pacing, where every chapter works pretty well and makes you want to keep reading. It's kind of addicting reading stuff. Which is good and bad. It's very fun, but what it doesn't give me is the deep, contemplative, comforting sense that I get when I read Tolkien. His style is absolutely nothing like that. And he doesn't have a voice that I fall in love with, so those things are probably why this doesn't hit my heart in the same way that certain other fantasy works do. So while this is amazing stuff in many ways, but doesn't reach five stars heights for me personally.

Besides that, main complaints: too long, and Dalinar is annoying. With that being said, even those complaints are mitigated. There's a big pay-off at the end for all the long slogging out through the sufferings of Bridge 4. And honestly, the sloggings of Bridge 4 were kind of fun to read...it's the sloggins of Dalinar continuing to not change for 900 pages that's not so fun. But, Dalinar has a major important change towards the end that helps redeem his character for me. Took him a long time to grow but he did eventually do it in a satisfying way.

Kaladin is easily the most likable character. I think it's unique to have a warrior leader type who is also a skilled medic. His back story is pretty gnarly too. I love the way his story is told. Nonlinear, doing flashbacks artfully as needed to gradually reveal his backstory, but starting you off close to the action of his main plot as possible with this line: “It appeared that he'd been wrong. There had been something more they could do to him. One final torment the world had reserved just for Kaladin. And it was called Bridge Four.” Right from this line you know it's going to be good, and it is: the story of Bridge 4 is easily the best story in this whole thing. It starts with a group of men completely devoid of hope, completely in despair; their lives are over. They are defined by isolation, hopelessness, lack of humanity. That's where you start, and by the end...extremely satisfying.

Kaladin's character is relatable, likeable, not an idiot like most protagonists but actually quite smart. Overall a great, great character, and many of the side characters in Bridge 4 are entertaining as well.

The main POVs, in order of screentime, are Kaladin (awesome), Dalinar (annoying), and Shallan (interesting). She's a character who is simultaneously ditzy/naive on people skills, and yet also very smart and skilled in the scholarly world, blossoming into the world of intellectual learning. A lot of her feelings remind me of the feelings I had when going to college, only she has one brilliant but enslaving person as her teacher rather than a host of different teachers. She is plunged into a world of reading and study and reporting that's all consuming, but she finds that she actually kind of loves it. She's also a skilled artist which is used in a rather unique way as the story progresses and she discovers she has a hidden power which is quite frightening in some of its forms.

The twist to Shallan's story (which is revealed very early in the story so this really isn't a spoiler so much as a premise) is that she's actually studying from this person (Jasnah) in order to steal something of great magical value from her so that Shallan can save her family from ruin. While this plot is unfolding, Jasnah is teaching her about morality and ethics and philosophy that directly impacts Shallan's decisions.

Shallan's story also provides a place for us, the readers, to get to understand a little more of how magic works in this world, which is nice, since the other POV characters are basically clueless about both of those, as well as a great deal of other things.

They start to delve into the history of this world, which is only very gradually revealed even by the end of the book, but it's shown that the next book is likely going to delve into that a lot more. When I say history though, I mean exciting stuff, like where these extremely powerful shardblades and shardplate comes from, who the Radiants were, why the abandoned mankind, the origin of the voidbringers, their relevance to today's wars, etc. I think the next book is going to be pretty exciting stuff both from a worldbuilding-revealing perspective as well as an action perspective, although what exactly the sides of the coming conflict will be is yet to be seen.

It was enjoyable. This is a re-telling of Cinderella, but several of the details have been changed around, so don't expect it to be the exact same. I think a lot of people would be disappointed that it doesn't end with her marrying the prince.

Two major tweaks to the Cinderella story: 1) she's a cyborg (duh). 2) this is much more feminist. Cinderella isn't just waiting around for other people to do things; she has a job and skills and takes initiative on her own; she isn't waiting for anyone to rescue her. I enjoyed both of these tweaks.

There's lots of cyberpunk-mechanic vibe which I enjoyed.

There's a plot twist that you can predict from basically the beginning of the book.

And there's the problem that the politics plot in this world feels like it was dreamed up by a ten year old who knows nothing about real politics. The novel takes place in New Beijing, the capital of one of earth's kingdoms. The lunar queen is visiting. She and her guards act with impunity in the royal court, killing people and mind-controlling crowds and having basically just perfect control of whatever they want. The prince stands by helplessly and does he have his own guards? No, somehow in his own court and his own city he has no guards, no military power, he's completely out of control. none of this makes any sense. If the lunars are so powerful then why would an earth “emperor” allow them to visit earth? And why would they take -100 precautions against them?

The ending also felt completely out of left field. Why in the world does going to Africa make any sense as a means of Cinder retaking her lunar kingdom....??? Also how does that satisfyingly resolve anything?

I still enjoyed reading most of this, but the botched ending is hard to get past.

There are some books that you just have to read if you want to understand the source of a large grouping of references and allusions in our culture. As I read, I'll talk about what I'm reading to my friends. I was mentioning Achilles' death to my wife, and she said, “oh, that's where the name Achilles' Tendon comes from...”. Greek literature explains a lot of the idioms and names even that are baked into our language, as well as many of our tropes: I've heard speeches or sermons mention the myth of Sisyphus many times, still as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago. For those reasons alone, I am immensely grateful I read the Iliad.

I'm also grateful for the epic feeling it has, for the theme of the sad and brutal nature of war (is this the first book with the theme “war is hell”? not sure, but it's certainly one of the most notable early works with this theme).

I also appreciate how, while the story is narrated from the perspective of the Greeks—it's clear we are meant to want them to win over the Trojans—this does not mean that Homer portrays all the Greeks as ideal heroes and all of the Trojans as evil villains. In fact, great lengths are taken to show how much of an asshole Achilles is and how noble that Hector is. These two (each of which represent the best of each side—at least, the best militarily, in Achilles' case) are oppositely aligned with how you would think. Achilles, the best warrior for the “good” side, is narcissistic, selfish, arrogant, and profane in how he treats the living and the dead. Hector, the best warrior for the “bad” Trojans, is a family man, is loved by all, is noble and just and temperate. When Achilles kills Hector (spoilers) you actually feel pretty sad; this isn't just a patriotic “boo-yeah, take that” kind of book.

Since I don't have the pleasure of knowing how to read Greek, I had to read this in translation (not ideal for something that's poetry). So unfortunately I know that there's a whole aspect to this that I completely missed out on.

Another word about the particular translation I read (the big gold book with the Iliad and the Odyssey together published by Fall River with the silhouette of a ship on the front cover). It's not great. It is meant to be a more “natural” translation, which I'm fine and good with, rather than necessarily being as literal as some. That's fine. What sucks is certain phrases are in this translation like “all big and bigly” and “all huge and hugely.” Yes I kid you not, those are in there. I'm guessing that they chose to translate it that way because that probably shows something about how it was worded in Greek....but certain things just don't translate well. As a translator, there are certain things you just need to not do literally or it sounds awful and really distracts the reader.

The main detracting aspect of the Iliad, for me, was that it's too long. You know how in Dragonball Z every episode started to feel the same? That's how this book is from about the 40% mark to the 80% mark. It's extremely repetitive. Another bunch of people die, and many of them are given a paragraph elegy of what they were known for in their life, usually closed by a remark about how all of their fill-in-the-blank (whether they had a lot of money or friends or whatever) couldn't save them from death in the end. Repeat this five more times in a row. Then have the Greeks get pushed back a little further. Then have some hero spur people to greater action with their words. Then go back to listing a bunch of people dying, repeat ad nauseum. Again. And again. And again. Times fifty. It's just too much; you could just skip over most of that and be none the worse; the plot isn't progressing, we're still just waiting for most of the book for Achilles to save the Greeks.

There is a huge host of heroes, especially on the Greek side. I like that. Diomed, Sarpedon, the two Ajaxes, Odysseus, Agamemnon, the Spartan dude Menelaus, Patroclus, Hector, Achilles. Each of these have their limelight moments and each one has certain things that they're better at. That's kind of co ol. A couple of important people actually die before the end. And Hector of course, the second most important person in the whole book. Most of this book is a list of Hector's triumphs over the Greeks and constant allusion/foreshadowing that he will die in the end at Achilles hands and Achilles will die also. It's stated so many times that it's kind of interesting how different the Greeks viewed suspense in literature than we do.

The gods feature a lot. They are constantly fighting with each other in petty squabbles. For some reason they are intensely preoccupied with the fight of the Greeks vs the Trojans, like they have nothing better to do than watch this spectator sport and mess with it occasionally. It feels kind of random and whimsical, not really that helpful to the story from my perspective, but I'm sure for the Greeks reading in Homer's time it was probably more meaningful. I don't like how the gods just randomly whisk people away in a mist or do other abilities that apparently are universal to all gods and have nothing to do with their particular gifting.

A big part of what I experienced while reading the Iliad happened when reading the passages written about someone dying. Homer does tons of these. He will describe the spear piercing through their head just below the forehead, piercing all the way through their bones and brains and coming out the backside or something pretty graphic and detailed like that. Then he'll talk about what this person was known for, how they had a lot of friends back home because they owned a tavern, or they were known for winning some battles against their neighbors, etc, and oftentimes there's some comment about how none of their fill-in-the-blank could save them now from dying. I read these passages as a mixture of sadness and graphic brutality.

The meaning I read into these is: war is Hell, man is mortal, nothing you do in life can save you from your predestined end, no matter how impressive your life has been up until that point.

There's a lot of the fatalism philosophy throughout other passages in the Iliad that inform my take on these death passages. By fatalism I mean the idea (which you often see in Greek philosophical works as well as their myths) that one's death (and other major events in one's life) have been predetermined by spiritual powers outside of our control, determined perhaps since long before we were even born.

This idea is no longer popular in Western culture, especially in America, we prefer the myth (literary usage of the term) that man can choose his own destiny. I think we can lose balance. Reality is that there are many huge powers in the world that are very much outside of our control, which should be evident to anyone regardless of your spiritual beliefs, and at some level we have to make peace with that reality in our lives. We don't get to control when we die. We have some say in it, we can eat healthier and choose to not smoke, etc, but still, you could die of heart complications after giving birth to a child, as just happened to a friend of my wife's the other day. It's a very sad story and having to cope with things like that is a fundamental part of the human condition I think.

So I think the Iliad has value for speaking to that theme, although I hardly think it covers it very exhaustively.

My main complaint is just that it's too repetitive.

I also wonder a lot about Homer's intent. According to scholars, they think this was written a few hundred years after these events took place. But it's written with a lot of details that make it feel pretty historical, all of these specific people with their backstories and so forth. It seems odd that Homer would make up all of these details wholecloth. I like to imagine that perhaps it was written during the time that these events happened, and he merely used these stories about the gods and these miraculous events in the battles as ways of explaining events that people witnessed that didn't make a lot of sense.

War has lots of chaos in it, weird things happening all the time, and we need a way to make sense of these things that heavily impact us, like our best friend dying, or inexplicably losing a conflict that you thought you would win, or some enemy of ours seeming to just miraculously never get injured when your efforts would yield great results with anyone else. If I look at it this way, Homer's story makes sense; if I side with the scholars it just doesn't. So I choose to believe that Homer wrote about events that happened in his lifetime.

There's a lot of beautiful turns of phrase and epic scenes and other passages that also made this worth reading. I've made an index of them for myself so that in the future I can refer to that instead of having to read the whole thing again. Because l'm lazy, there's only so much time, and frankly it was a slog to read sometimes. But I'm still glad I read it. I honestly feel like it's kind of overrated when compared to some other ancient literature that speak to more themes and transcend through time and space better. But, I'm reading it in translation and not getting the full affect of the poetry.

And also, it's still quite the epic. Not one I always understand, but still, quite the epic undertaking, and done in prehistory, a precursor to so much else. Cheers, Homer, for all that you did and the way you paved to so much more in the world of literature that can all be passed back to you. Thank you so much for what you did. The world was changed because of you.

Practical, concise, good dense overview of anxiety and all the things you can do about it.

I love the epic ending of this book. It makes me want to go out and read the next 10 books in the series right now. (Not that I have that much time on my hands sadly!) Having watched the first four seasons of The Expanse before reading this, I knew some of what to expect. The two are pretty similar in tone, characters, plotline, etc. One thing different was Miller is fleshed out more in the book and his story is has some more nuances and he has more crossover time with the crew of the Rocinante.

Speaking of which, the thing I think the Expanse does best is show different characters in relationship with each other. That is just stellar. The characters are deep, you get a sense of full backstories, but the book isn't so slow-paced as to delve into those in detail or anything. For me the pacing is perfect. (I'm sure there are many for whom this would be too slow though.)

As far as the prose, there are some really good metaphors, but aside from that it's kind of standard stuff.

The worldbuilding is wonderful, perhaps the other thing that The Expanse does best. This is “hard scifi,” in the sense that they don't constantly violate the laws of physics. Ships actually fly the way ships would fly in space, inertia is conserved, the insane G-forces involved in manuevering in space wreck havoc on the human body and have to be compensated for in various ways, etc. This, I love. It's very interesting to me to think about how the world (I mean, solar system) might look in a couple hundred years. There are two specific things that are in the books that science doesn't know of a way to make possible currently, but that is kind of called out and safely quarantined. So you have just enough mysterious stuff to provoke a sense of wonder, but not a blatant disregard of the laws of physics. It feels much more realistic and immersive that way.

Why I rate this a 4* and not 5* I couldn't exactly say. I've spent some time pondering that, and at the end of the day I don't think it's anything that's objectively wrong with it; it just isn't in the style that I would prefer, the style that really makes me love something. But I do really enjoy this book and really look forward to reading more.

Anachronism taken to an art-form.

The way you frame a problem predisposes you to certain kinds of solutions and we usually then miss out on vastly better solutions that we never could have thought of because of the initial framing...unless we learn the process of RE-framing.

My first impression of the book was that it was shaped very strangely. It's very wide but not very tall, reminiscent of some of the comic books I read growing up. One of the benefits of this is that the pages actually stay open if you leave it open and move your hands elsewhere, say to type up notes.

The style is very intentionally low-key, informal. And that fits the content of the book. The reframing process is part art, part science. It's really a creative process rather than a rigid linear thing, although it gives you a linear set of things to try, different ways to reframe. The design of this book is so wise; it helps business-type, linear, direct people engage in non-linear, creative problem-solving. It works well for basically whoever you are though.

Not only is this book chock-full of practical advice, it also gives examples at every turn, so many examples, and each of them are evocative and really help to illustrate the principle.

It's also just a really important topic; I now see (not just from the examples but also from practicing these principles on several problems both at work and personal and in my marriage) that learning the art of reframing is one of the best skills to learn in life, period. No holds barred. Not only do you come up with vastly better types of solutions, but you also learn to empathize with and understand other people better and the world better as a whole.

And this process also is really masterful at managing the balance between action and thinking/reflecting.

To boot, it provides a whole series, at the end, of techniques for when your client/stakeholders/whoever are resisting the process. This guy really knows how to write a practical book to actually help you in the trenches really well.

Need I say more?

This was a really good book. It started with making the case for why elimonating hurry is a spiritual discipline because after all can you imagine Jesus ever hurrying? It makes the case that we should read the gospels in a new light, not just ethical or theological, but read them as a biography, read them through asking the question how can I adopt a lifestyle more like Jesus so I can get the results he got? And it unpacks the verse about the paradox of the light yoke to explain how Jesus actually intended for us to do that.

Then a lot of the book goes through the different ways in which the modern life is all about hurry and stress and business and lust and materialism. This part wasn't bad but it wasn't great either to be honest because of course I already know all that. For me it was preaching to the choir. Nonetheless there was some great facts in there.

The last part has a really awesome list of practical suggestions to put this into action. Loved it.

This book is changing how I'm living and it has spurred so many conversations. It's one of very few books that I would actually recommend to almost anyone.

Does everyone have to write about death? Were poets emo before emos?

Aside from too much yay deathyness, this were a pretty enjoyable collection of poetry, a good sampling of all poetry by English authors; I guess that's the project they set out to do but just be aware that if you want to read Scottish or Irish poets or Americans those will not be read here.

I enjoyed getting acquainted with a wide variety of these poets starting all the way back with Chaucer and Spencer and Shakespeare and progressing up through the 1800s. This was a great way to sample many people and get an idea of who you'd like to read more of.

This was a thorough primer on all of the sounds made in all of the world's languages (as far as linguists know at the present time). It had practical exercises to help someone whose first language is English to be able to be able to learn to pronounce the sounds that are foreign.

This is intended to be used alongside a course where you are practicing hearing and producing sounds with other people. No textbook can cover that part.

You can tell the author clearly knows a LOT about phonetics, as they were able to discuss many of the finer points of the APA vs the IPA and things not even covered by either. The author was good, also, at differentiating what source they had for different things and how relatively rare different sounds are, what's up for debate in the field of phonetics, etc.

Overall quite thorough and excellent.