Levi

Today I imagined myself having a son, say a teenager, well into his love of books, perusing my bookshelf for a new read, and idly reaching for Swann's Way. I would take an action then that I would probably not for any other book–I would stop him from reading it.

I would explain to him that, if he were to read it now, he would quickly grow bored with it and put it down, and perhaps as a result never return to it the rest of his life, and therefore never know an exquisite kind of joy, a pleasure completely ineffable, sublime, on a higher plane than the other pleasures of life, consuming them with its scope, because this work takes a certain pleasure, which is most like pleasure itself, a pleasure of taking certain things in our minds, such as the constructs of memory, love, consciousness, and human experience, and enjoying those pleasures themselves rather than merely the various manifestations of them.

(That was a Proustian sentence right there–not as elegant, but demonstrating the length. He was famous for valuing long sentences, painstakingly crafting them until they conveyed exactly what he wished, not a word more or less.)

I would tell my son, no, please, do not read it yet, please wait. Let the anticipation of it build itself up in your mind for years, and then, when you are ready, read it and experience what I experienced at 30, which I never could have experienced if I had read it at 15 or even 20. I want you to have that experience.

This book isn't for you if you get annoyed at books for not having a quick enough pace. One of the publishers that Proust submitted his manuscript turned it down, saying that his readers couldn't be bothered to read things where it takes 30 pages for the narrator to turn over in bed.

I find that quip humorous because it is true. This isn't a book about lots of things happening. This is a book about memory more than anything else, but also largely about love and about how we relate to experiences and people and ideas in our minds, and the differences between our conceptions of a thing or person and what that thing or person truly is.

I've never read anything like this. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever read. If you are a veteran reader and you haven't read this yet, you are about to encounter something powerful in its refinement, heady in its depth. Enjoy having your life changed. And if you want a recommendation of something to listen to while you read this, try the Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes by Erik Satie. He was part of the same school of piano compositions as Debussy, and his music was highly esteemed by Marcel Proust.

A mixed bag of brilliant insights on one hand and absolutely pedantry and jingoism on the other. GKC speaks in metaphor constantly, and some of them are brilliant and others completely break down quickly. Some of his arguments are sublime while others are easily and even obviously refuted, and yet he pretends they are rock solid, which is annoying. Part of that is that this was written a few generations ago so I'm sure some is lost in translation. He refers to contemporary events so sometimes you have to guess a little at exact meaning based on context. And sometimes you get the sense that certain words may have been used differently then. But for the most part it is understandable; I don't think you need a study guide for this necessarily.

He gives some of his opponents due justice but for most of them he merely argues against a straw man. Most of his treatments of other philosophers or thinkers were totally insufficient. It's funny that he accuses others of jingoism and yet he is the most jingoistic writer I have possibly ever read.

His language is so dense with metaphor on abstract ideas (religion/philosophy/history/etc) that you have to stop and think about it carefully. This isn't a quick read, but for those who enjoy having to really think about and engage with what you read. That should be a selling point really but...just putting it out there.

So...should you read this? If you're a Christian thinker I think the answer is still a resounding YES for multiple reasons. First for the gold in here, even if you have to sift gold out of mud it's still gold! And the second reason is that he provides a model of how to go about searching for meaning in a totally different way than the typical. That's interesting enough in its own right. And a third is that this guy probably influenced other writers that you love...CS Lewis, JR Tolkien, Barfield, George MacDonald, the list goes on.

So yes, read this, just be ready to take some things with a grain of salt.

I try to semi-regularly engage in reading outside of my normal genres. This being a Christian romance novel, it was clearly outside the norm for me. I almost never read romance and I only read select Christian novels. But my wife's favorite author is Francine Rivers, so I decided I needed to find out what it was about.

This is also kind of in the historical fiction category. It's in California during the Gold Rush and the time period when fires devastated San Francisco on a regular basis. I found the historical backdrop mildly interesting, but I wouldn't say the worldbuilding was necessarily the richest or deepest. It was of moderate depth.

Where this book really shines is the story itself. If you're familiar with the book of Hosea (God tells a prophet to marry a prostitute and keep re-buying her when she returns to prostitution) and you think you would enjoy a more modern retelling of that story, then you will probably like this book. The style and prose and character development are all fine, pretty standard stuff. Nothing terrible, but also nothing extraordinary. They don't get in the way. What really shines is just the power of this story. Right at the beginning of the main story I was intrigued by the opening setup: a stone-faced prostitute takes daily walks. A farmer is visiting town and hears God clearly tell him to pursue her and marry her. He is taken completely aback and thinks that cannot be. But God's voice is clear. Ok...what is he going to do? What are all the implications of this? What is everyone going to say? How is he going to go about getting through to her? Etc.

Before the main story, we are given Angel's backstory as a child, showing what happened to her mother, how her mother went from adultery to prostitution, what it was like for a little girl growing up with a mother who is a woman of the night, and what happened to her after her mother died. It's heartbreaking and it feels pretty realistic. Speaking of which, I felt that this book treated the subject matter (prostitution, including the thinking of the prostitute and everyone else who interacts with prostitutes) pretty realistically. I was pleasantly surprised by this. Most Christian books, I think, would really write about this in a manner betraying just how little the author knew. This book did not reek of that at all.

In fact it accurately (in my humble opinion) portrays just how long it would take someone like that to change their worldview. As this man woos her and tries to show her a different way of engaging in relationships with other people, she is stubbornly resistant, and this makes sense. I'm actually glad that the story took as long as it did for Angel to slowly change how she viewed herself and her ability to trust others and engage in a spiritual life. I haven't personally recovered specifically from being a prostitute, but I have recovered from my own deep-seated issues and worked with friends of all kinds, recovering from addiction, trauma, etc. And it takes a few years of hard work for your brain to change about deep, meaningful things. It is so cheap and unrealistic when novels pretend like these things can just be fixed with a snap of the wand. Psychological/spiritual/mental problems take a lot of practice and failure in order to work through. This book portrayed that reality. I can imagine how some readers would have been put off by that but I for one really appreciate it.

This book did a good job of showing the inner thoughts of several different characters. I felt it could have given Michael (the man who marries Angel) a flaw or two. (No, I don't consider having a slight temper when really provoked to be a real “flaw”.) And I was annoyed by some of the other things in here that I recognize are simply the expected tropes of romance, but annoy me nonetheless: women staring longingly at men swinging axes with broad strokes, going on and on about how perfectly handsome they are, yada yada. Michael is, of course, perfectly handsome in every way. No flaws. Oh and he beats up five dudes in a tavern who are bigger than him, without any given reason why he would be able to do that. Ok. Fantasy. And yes, the epilogue is one of those where every character gets a happy ending with a bow on top. But these things were minor annoyances to me, just surface problems, not really deep problems with the story or anything.

There's also a pretty interesting side story that develops later on with two of the other characters. I won't say anything more about it besides that it has to do with the book of Ruth and it was a pleasant and interesting side story, kind of an alternate love story to the main one being played out.

I also like that after halfway through the story, it changes from the dynamic being just the two of them (Michael and Angel) to having a small community around them. I think that was really important to fleshing out this kind of story into a more full picture. Inner change doesn't happen in a vacuum, it happens largely in the interaction with one's community.

Ok, so final verdict: this is a really powerful story. It is the true Gospel told in a realistic, compelling manner. If you're a literary reader, this isn't necessarily going to appeal to your brain as much, but it also doesn't do anything really bad to get in the way. Your'e reading it for the main plot and for the idea of putting yourself in this situation. That's the way I read it at least and I thought it was very worthwhile.

I will also mention the narrator on the audiobook was good. There was also a 10 minute interview with the author at the end of the book–well worth listening to to hear where the author was coming from in writing this. I am thankful to Francine Rivers for writing something that so profoundly impacted her personally. A lot of times it's those books that end up making the biggest impact, and I'd say that is self-evident in this instance. This is her most popular book by far, and is being made into a movie in 2021. I encourage anyone who can enjoy Christian fiction to check it out. I also recommend it for people interested in Christianity who want to know what real Christianity (actually living by the teachings of Jesus) can look like.

Most Christian nonfiction today is shallow, simple, perhaps with an insight or two that is spun out into an entire book and then made to fit scripture with a couple of cherrypicked verses. Not much is written that is true “study” material, to shed light on what the Bible, especially the Old Testament, really means. Christians affirm that we should read the Bible, but without good teaching about the Bible, most of the Old Testament—as well as many things in the New—are opaque, obtuse, and therefore essentially without meaning as we read them. Is blindly reading the Bible without understanding really that helpful?

A large group of Christians simply give up on reading the Bible at all. Another group reads it rotely without understand huge swaths of it or knowing how to apply it. Still another group just read the parts they like and skip the rest. The remainder who continually study and grow in their understanding are few, and I am not always among them. Many of us feel inundated in the genealogies, clueless in the sacrifices, lost in translations.

That is why we so desparately need to read books like this one, that delve into not fringe concepts or sectarian doctrine, but simply into the pure gospel, into the most important beliefs of orthodox Christianity, and explain them, using the Bible to interpret itself. I yearn to read more books like this that are like dense and nourishing, like waybread. Imagine eating cotton candy for years (popular Christian nonfiction) and then sinking your teeth into something dense and nutritious. You might have to adjust your expectation a little, but it is definitely the nourishment you have been lacking.

The topic of this book is the story of bread as told in the Bible. There is also a second story woven throughout, where the author tells the story of his life, each segment of which illustrates an aspect of the story of bread. I found myself fascinated by the depth of the former and intrigued by the latter. The Bible says a lot more about bread than I would have given it credit for, and it's very meaningful. The offerings in Leviticus are explained and have provided a deep meaning (prefiguring Jesus among other things) for a section of scripture that previously was closed off to my understanding.

Speaking of things previously closed off to my understanding, he takes several genealogies and puts down the meanings of the names into poems that makes a lot of sense. Sometimes there are multiple meanings of a name so he picks the one that fits best. I found these very insightful; the very first one especially (the ten names from Adam to Abraham) was kind of mind-blowing.

Something he does a lot is points out patterns in scripture. For example he shows how the man of the flesh always precedes his corrolary man of the spirit. Adam precedes Christ. Yeasty bread precedes unlevened bread. The law comes before grace, Cain before Abel, Ishmael before Isaac, Esau before Jacob, Leah before Rachel, Saul before David. God sets things up the fleshy version of an archetype so that we can see the spirit version of that man/woman/type more clearly.

To give you an example of the kind of teaching that is in this book, here are some points from the first section on the Garden of Eden:
- The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was probably a fig tree. They made the fig leaves from this tree. Our kind of clothing (knowledge of good and evil) is wholly inadequate to make us moral; it cannot cover our shame.
- God put enmity between not just Eve and Satan, but rather, Eve's seed and Satan's seed. Satan's seed comes about later in Genesis with the Nefilim, and Jesus mentions Satan's seed in a parable about the wheat and the tares. Seed represents offspring or fruit...this ties into so much else in scripture. The phrase “seed of the woman” is a curious phrase and prefigure Christ, as he is the only human who has ever been born only of a woman but not a (human) man.
- Abel sacrficed a lamb, prefiguring Christ, which was acceptable as a covering for sin (which God had just established by sacrificing animals to cover Adam and Eve). Cain's sacrifice was not accepted because it was the fruit of the ground (his labors). Adam and Eve did not labor at all to earn the first garments that covered them. The covering for sin comes from God's work alone.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of different parts of the Bible illuminated. The book of Ruth features heavily; so many of the weird actions are explained by understanding the culture. Also featured is Abraham, the children of Israel eating mana, Elijah living on bread from heaven, Ezekiel bread, and more. There's also a section at the end going briefly through the New Testament, about Jesus, how he is the bread of life, etc. This was the only section I felt could have been expanded and improved.

This book does Christian nonfiction right in many ways. For one, its primary source is the Word of God itself, not just some dude's opinions. Second, the primary way it interprets the Word of God is also through the Word of God, searching for patterns in it, rather than interpretting each verse piecemeal in the way that is most convenient to the author, or relying heavily on commentaries. He also pulls from some other sources besides the Bible, and these are mostly things that were written very soon after the Bible was written, not modern work in a completely different era. And finally, he applies it to examples in his own life, and does so in a daringly vulnerable way, hiding nothing, and encouraging me to do the same in my own life.

I am surprised at my own enthusaism in reviewing this. I think one of the reasons—besides how good the book is—is that I feel I have been in a desert for so long. I was parched, drinking the dehydrating soda of most modern Christian nonfiction, and now I've rediscovered water: true scholarship that is all about exploring the actual Word of God in depth. This book is full of insights about scripture that I have never noticed before in the many times that I have read the Bible. Time and time again, while reading this, I would say, “wow! That's true, that is a pattern in scripture. That pattern not only applies to the 2-3 examples he is mentioning in this book, but also to 1-2 other examples that are popping to my mind. This is an accurate observation and I now know the Bible better!” After saying this to myself (in not so many words) I would make a note on an index card and continue reading. I ended up with 70-something notes, most of which were moments like that, and some of which were riveting accounts from the author's personal life.

I will give a disclosure. I am acquainted with the author. However, I honestly don't think that influenced my experience of the book much. I pride myself in being objective. As the leader of a writer's group, I'm used to being brutally honest with my writing friends. But there was no major criticism I had for this work. I've read a lot, and this was one of the best books I've read on the Bible, and I will cherish it for years to come. I'm considering leading a Bible study on it.

Good ideas. Reflects the heart of Jesus. Overly short though, almost comically so. Could have been more diverse in its examples/stories/expounding on themes in a wider variety of contexts or going into more depth.

First for a humorous review:

Meno: Socrates, can virtue can be taught? Socrates: dunno, I can't even say what virtue is, nor have I ever met someone who knew what it was. Meno: like, omg, you're so dumb, I know what virtue is. Socrates: oh ok wise one, go ahead and drop some knowledge, I'm so glad that you're about to enlighten me. Meno: virtue is different for men and women and children. Socrates: that's not the same as giving a definition of what virtue itself is. If I asked you what the concept of “shape” is, you wouldn't tell me that it is different for squares and circles...you would tell me what squares and circles have in common, dumbass. Meno: oh ok, hold up...virtue is knowing what is beautiful and being able to acquire it. Socrates: ok first of all, by beautiful you just mean good right? (ok yeah fine). And second, so if someone acquires wealth at any cost that's virtuous? Meno: no, no...they have to acquire it in a virtuous way... Socrates: so you see your reasoning is circular right? Meno: dammit Socrates, you've got me all confused now. You're like this electric fish that benumbs things that get near it. Socrates: anyways let me go through a long process of teaching a random slave of yours some basic geometry, but check it out, I'm going to teach without teaching, by just asking questions. At first the slave thinks he knows something and then realizes he's totally wrong. Look Meno, the slave clearly is better off now than before right? So I'm not like a fish that benumbs people with electricity. Meno: damnit ok fine.

Now for a more serious review.

Socrates is brilliantly witty as usual. This dialogue starts with Meno asking Socrates whether virtue can be taught, and Socrates countering that he doesn't know what virtue is. Socrates invites Meno to tell him what virtue is, and as is the norm with Socrates' foils, Meno falls completely into the trap of arrogance, thinking he can describe it to Socrates. He quickly ends up in circular reasoning and says that Socrates makes him feel confused, benumbed, as if stung by an electric fish.

This dialogue also contains an explanation, in the middle, of why learning is actually recollection, which is very useful as it is referenced in other dialogues as well. To illustrate the point, Socrates has Meno take a random person from the crowd (one of Meno's slaves I think) and Socrates proceeds to go through some basic geometry with him–but only by asking leading questions, never by teaching. He shows that the slave at first thinks he knows something, and then is confused (by Socrates showing his is wrong), and then thinks he knows again, and then is confused again. By asking questions, Socrates teaches him some basic principles of geometry and says that he must have known these things all along since the slave is coming up with these opinions on his own, which must have existed prior. I thought this was interesting, and I would have countered that the slave was coming up with his opinions on the spot.

Next it goes into what I think is the main point of Meno: can virtue be taught? Socrates shows how many men are virtuous and yet their sons are not, and surely this shows that these men didn't know how to teach it, for if they did know, they would have gladly taught it to their sons, the same way that they taught their sons horsemanship and cobbling and other things. So it's shown that virtue isn't mere knowledge and in the end virtue is compared to how a prophet knows something (has a correct opinion) but does not know how he knows it (true knowledge). So those who are virtuous have a correct opinion without the knowledge of why it is correct (without the proof).

This was intriguing as always and I greatly enjoyed it. I wish I could be there and try out on Socrates my own definition of virtue and see how he would tear it apart. I would posit a definition that virtue is taking actions of loves towards others, and love is treating others better than one's self. I think I might argue that moderation is not one of the virtues, but I would probably keep the other set of virtues that the Greeks mentioned. It would be an interesting debate. Maybe I would have been obliterated. But it would have been enlightening, I'm sure. Socrates was a brilliant man.

Full of the same interesting thoughts and brilliance of Thrawn, with the addition of the menace of Vader at every step. While the first novel in this series, Thrawn, felt more like an origin story, this novel feels more like a straight up mystery, where big interesting things are revealed at the end. This novel does a great job of filling in lots of Star Wars worldbuilding things you might have wondered about. Also, the audiobook has the great production quality that the first one had.

I can't give it full marks however, for it did get pretty repetitive with Vader always menacing Thrawn and Thrawn always asking for trust and going back and forth on the exact same conversations...like ok I get it, Vader is menacing, but you can't have him actually kill Thrawn because he's in other books, but like...enough is enough.

Besides that though...pretty solid.

Also this is technically a spoiler but not really, as you discover this right at the beginning of the book, but this features Anakin Skywalker (before being Vader) and Padmé Amadilla pretty heavily.

It does not feature Eli Vanto or Arinda Pryce at all however, so that's kind of sad.

Kurt Vonnegut was hilarious, strange, and brilliant, as usual.

This book is kind of about a Martian invasion. And kind of about an extreme narcissist who exists now as a wave form (that starts at the Sun and terminates in Betelgeuse) and materializes periodically in different places. And kind of about the Space Wanderer, Malachi Constant, who travels about on Mercury and Mars and Earth and Titan. And kind of about prophecy. And it's kind of more about the idea that man shouldn't conflate luck with God/gods having favor/disfavor on him. There's a hilarious new religion invented to worship “God of the Utterly Indifferent.” God doesn't care about you. That's the point of the religion. LOL.

Kurt is hilarious. Whether he's describing his bizarre religion, or explaining the epic swampiness of bureaucracy, or the painstaking process of an idiot trying to write down a list of everything he knows, a mnemonic song of the 21 months of Mars (in order to keep straight which ones have 30 or 31 days), or the design of the Martian attack spaceship:

“The only controls available to those onboard were two push-buttons on the center-post of the cabin–one labeled on and one labeled off. The on button simply started a flight from Mars. The off button was connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off.”

Oftentimes he masterfully blends insight and irony and/or absurdist humor.

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of everything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

“It has been said that Earthling civilization, so far, has created ten thousand wars, but only three intelligent commentaries on war–the commentaries of Thucydides, of Julius Ceasar and of Winston Niles Rumfoord.”

He also occasionally really packs an emotional punch. He masterfully tells a love story in two pages, 161-163, which moved me surprisingly deeply. It reads as powerfully as a myth. There's also a very poignant ending written for one of the characters in the middle of the book.

A favorite quote: “All living things were brothers, and all dead things were even more so.”

KV has so many insights about the weird way humans are. For instance he describes on page 276 how humans are peculiar in that they behave at all times as if they were performing for an imaginary Big Eye–one ravenous for entertainment. He goes on to describe this in detail.

The main point of the book at the end is most likely–if it does have a point–that all the events we ascribe meaning to are not necessarily meaningful. They could be random, or even worse, they could be caused by the whimsy of some other beings who, far from gods, simply want something silly and self-centered and we're just incidentally "in the way."He also goes on to point out that the worst atrocities in history were done by people who do things they think God wants done. Don't do anything you think God wants done. He doesn't need you. This was another big LOL for me; obviously such a religion wouldn't get many followers in real life. I think his aim is probably making fun of religion in general--or perhaps, making fun of how we humans think about and use religion.

But you don't read Kurt Vonnegut to get “a point.” You read him because he's hilarious in a very unique way, supremely witty, makes you think, and best of all, for me at least, I honestly can never tell when he's being ironic and when he's not because–here's my theory–he has this sense of humor that just mixes sincerity and irony together into one thing. He's both at the same time. It's my theory that he is doing this because he reminds me of me when I am doing that. Not that I'm saying I'm nearly as funny as Kurt. But it reminds me of me doing that.

Just to set expectations in case you've never heard of Vonnegut, this is not a standard novel with nice sympathetic characters whose only flaw is being clumsy and cute. His characters are all unlikable in this book, some of them kind of repulsive. But they are very human. And this isn't science fiction that's trying to be realistic–although a few things in it are kind of–but for the most part the science fiction is supposed to be absurd. Everything in the story–plot, science, characters, setting–are played with to make the book more entertaining, humorous, and insightful. That's how Vonnegut writes.

Anyways...read this. If you've never read Kurt Vonnegut, just grab one of his books. They're all really short and once you read one you'll probably know if you love him or hate him. It won't cost you much. And if you discover you love him, you will have gotten a whole lot out of him. If you were going to read one book I probably wouldn't start with this; I think Slaughterhouse Five is even better. But this is an excellent book as well. It's the first major one he got published I believe.

If you have read Slaughterhouse Five already, a good benefit of reading Sirens of Titan is that it explores the origins of the Trafalmadores, which is quite interesting–I won't spoil the fun for you. It comes towards the end of the book and is kind of an explanation of things that happen up until then.

Also, this book has Kazak: the hound of space!

Read it.

This is a collection of short stories by Ray Bradberry, which I borrowed from the library.

So you want to know about the future? A few pointers:
1. Everyone in space goes mad. There is no reason for this, it's just, you know—spaaaaaaace.
2. When people go mad, they get really philosophical. Cause, you know, that's what everyone does when they go mad.
3. Speaking of which, people in the future have lost the ability to think and act in a halfway reasonable way, especially when their life is at risk. Or someone else's. Why would we not do suicidal things? Spaaaaaace.
4. You might think that futuristics societies with affordable rocket ships and time travel machines and dome cities on Venus would mean they have things like alcohol and cigars (spoiler: they have to travel back in time to get those). Or that they would have hats to keep off the rains of Venus when they land there and have to treck for days through the jungle (nope: hats not invented yet). Or better yet, the ability to land their rocket ship next to a city instead of in the middle of nowhere. No, they don't have any of those things.
5. There are no space ships—only rocket ships.
6. There is no difference at all between Earth and the other planets. They are virtually the same in every way. They all have trees and breathable air and people who live there already. Why would they be any different than Earth??
7. You'd better get used to using landline telephones and phonographs if you want to survive in the future.
8. And old-fashioned sexism. There's a dab of that here and there too.
9. Nobody is happy in the future. They're either discontent that they live in a house that makes everything for them, or discontent that they're in space instead of home, or discontent that they're at home instead of space. Or the one guy who's traveling back and forth between home and space is alternately discontent in a different way in each place. Or you're a martian, and you invade Earth, and it's so nice that...that makes you discontent too? Sure. There are no exceptions. Everybody needs to be discontent and mad.

Some of the stories towards the end I actually liked quite a bit, but unfortunately, the majority of the stories are monotonous. They're just about malaise/discontent/madness in space/another planet/earth.

And unfortunately there are lots of non-starter premises. The same company that invents time travel machines has a problem on their hands when people don't come back from their vacation. Which totally makes sense, since it's not like they can master time...and have people come back to right when they left...nope.

Or another premise: it turns out that as the works of famous authors are burned on Earth, at some point that author shows up on Mars and begins to have a state of suffering as his works are burned. But when the last work is burned then the author dies. Wait, what exactly made them appear on Mars? Who knows, we don't need to explore that. Also, it's stated that when humans step onto Mars, that will drive them to Jupiter. Wait, how does this work? How do they know this? “Silence,” says Ray, “No one needs to ask questions like that here. The characters just know.”

These stories make the most sense if you look at them as surrealism. I think you're not supposed to really question how things came to be up until the beginning of the story or how the story makes sense in a coherent universe. Unfortunately for me, Bradbury's flavor of surrealism just never sat well with me. Maybe it would for others though.

Also, I will say, Bradberry has a unique way of handling the problem of when to challenge reader expectations: he just doesn't. Or another way of handling explaining strange premises: again, just don't. Everyone on earth has the same dream one night of the world ending. Why? Dunno, don't care. How? Dunno, don't care. Instead let's just focus intently on the characters doing the same thing that they do every night. Because that's exactly what people would do if the world was ending...? In fact, that's the very last thing.

And that brings me to another big problem I have with Bradbury's stories. The characters don't make sense. They just don't act like real people that I know. Their rationale is flimsy, very transparently invented to fit the mood the author wants to portray with the story, which is, unfortunately, always the same mood: “future” malaise. Some future malaise can be great on a story if it's implemented right and isn't spread out over every single story. But this?

Having read Fahrenheit 451 and loved it, I was hoping for more of the same love to be fulfilled here. Unfortunately, that was not the case. It did have a lot of the same poetic description and capturing certain moods and using beautiful allegories, but in the stories I disliked, these were all so over-done that it was sickening. I really wanted to like this. It's really too bad. His style was so perfectly balanced in 451. Oh well. Maybe I can still find something else he's written that is better than this.

Another kicker was to realize that most of these stories aren't really science fiction. A handful are just straight-up fantasy, nothing science fiction about them. And many of them were only science fiction on façade, not really. They premises often had little to do with any hard science. And mostly regarding things that I'm sure Ray must have been aware of in the 50s—he just didn't care.

So, enough criticism. To end on a high note, I'll summarize a few stories—all in the later half—that I did like.

Marionettes, Inc: what if your wife was too cold toward you, or conversely, too smothering? If you had lived that way for 10 or 20 years, what might you do to escape? Would you pay $10,000 to Marionettes Incorporated to get a live facsimilie of yourself? And if you did...what might happen? If your marionette is just like you, it might have feelings and such...as well as free will to change the game up on you. This story was delightfully terrifying.City: what if mankind has already been all over the universe and forgotten about it? What if we have already made enemies and they are waiting to take revenge on us? It's an entire empty city that the earth-men discover and it is spooky as hell.Zero Hour: Martians, hidding in underground tunnels all over Earth, are going to take over the world through our kids. Because kids have suspension of disbelief and because parents don't take kids seriously, they can play at their “make-believe” game of invaiders—that actually isn't make-believe—helping the Martians overthrow their parents so they can have later bedtimes and go to more movies on the weekends. This story was pretty funny.Rocket: if you were a poor man with a large family and you were all sick for space, what lengths might you go to? What experience might you have in doing so? This has an ethical flair to it.

Besides those, in the first half, Other Foot and Highway were alright. The other ten stories...not so much. I noticed that half of his stories that I liked were basically straight-up horror. So, is Ray Bradbury a talentless hack? No, I wouldn't say that. I would say that I don't like his style of surrealism but I do like his stories that aren't that—his horror, his realism (which I would classify the Rocket as), and his humor. These stories are in the minority in this collection. But I might buy this book if it was on sale for the handful of stories that I did like. Oh well.

I had a funny experience reading this. I intended to pick up the Captain's Daughter by Pushkin, and only when I got home from the library and started reading this did I stop and think–wait–for what reason did I put this in my queue? Upon realizing my mistake, I decided to go with it anyway and see what what random book that Lady Luck had chanced to give me.

My first impression was that the writing was pretty good, the character's voices were strong, but I didn't see why I should care about all these rich people. The opening scene was three moms sitting around while their kids played in the pool–definitely not the best way to start a compelling story. But the writing was good, so I decided to go a little further.

This isn't much of a spoiler, since this happens very soon at the beginning of the novel, but the precipitating event is that the protagonist's father, an old lonely lobsterman, is diagnosed with brain cancer. He's going to die soon.

As the book progressed, it became apparent that the main theme was really about someone feeling juxtaposed between two contrasting worlds: one of her childhood, one of adulthood. One rustic and working with her hands, the other pampered and surrounded by pretentious people. In both worlds she feels alternately like an insider or an outsider, like a native or a fake. That's pretty interesting.

There are also suplots all over the place with other characters and they're all fairly interesting. One of the strongest other subplots is a teenage girl who has gotten herself into trouble with a not-so-great boyfriend, and who ends up confiding in a stranger (the protagonist, Eliza) and getting help.

The style of this author is to constantly intersperse real-time events with memories and backstory. This could be annoying to some, but I was pretty comfortable with it in this book.

By the time I got halfway through the book, it actually became better and better–I didn't want to put it down at all. It became less about rich-people-problems and more about everyone-problems. And discovering some key insights into her parents and other people was also pretty riveting. Things click, and it all makes sense.

The ending was mixed for me–some parts of it were great, some parts put a bad taste in my mouth. It reverted back to the rich-people-problems thing for a little bit.

Overall, though, this was a very solid book, a nice blend, a well-mixed drink. I would easily recommend this to many people. It's definitely more oriented towards women, as most of the main characters are women. But personally I didn't feel turned off by that. Her dad is a character I really savored. Also, now I need to go eat some lobster. A lot of lobster. I remember how when I was in Maine, the McDonalds' had lobster mcMuffin. But I digress. This was a good read.

This is a dialogue about Crito, a friend of Socrates, coming to him in prison to convince him to flee (which they have arranged that he can do) and avoid being executed. Socrates refuses on moral grounds. Here are some of my notes.

“Crito: ‘But you see, Socrates, that the opinion of the many must be regarded, for what is now happening shows that they can do the greatest evil to anyone who has lost their good opinion.'

Socrates: ‘I only wish it were so, Crito; and that the many could do the greatest evil; for then they also would be able to do the greatest good–and what a fine thing this would be! But in reality they can do neither; for they cannot make a man either wise or foolish; and whatever they do is the result of chance.'“

I feel great empathy for Socrates and his disillusionment with groupthink and democracy in general. I watch the proceedings of courtroom juries and politics in America and see the same extreme dysfunction. It's sad–we've come so far but fall so short. On the flip side, I hear undertones of what I have found to be the converse truth: the greatest good is actually done on the individual level. My life has born much better fruit when I focused on what positive things I individually could do rather than worrying about politics/religion/other big things.

“And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man were destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice? Do we suppose that principle, whatever it may be in man, which has to do with justice and injustice, to be inferior to the body?”

He says it so precisely: the higher principles, whatever you want to call it (spirituality/morality/ethics/the social contract) must be of a higher nature than the body, the physical.

And then we come to Socrates' main argument for following the sentencing of the state. Because the state governs marriage, birth, and education, the state has an unequal relationship with Socrates–it is greater than he–and he should listen to it and obey it and not think himself greater than it.

I wish Crito argued back here. If he had I feel this dialogue would have been better. There are two main arguments I would like to have seen. The first is that Socrates himself established earlier that we should trust the opinion of experts more than that of the majority. But “the state” that Socrates is referring to is governed by the majority. Which is better, the opinion of experts or that of the majority? It appears to me to be a clear contradiction.

The second argument I would make would be that simply granting marriage certificates and birth certificates does not make the state legitimately the provider of those things. Marriage and birth are universal concepts and if a different state were here, or no state at all, people would still marry (or something akin to it) and still give birth. The state did not help me come into being (or have any authority over me) any more than me sticking a label on an item means that I caused that thing to come into being (or have any authority over it). And with education, this is only a financial transaction between taxpayers and their state. Partaking in such a transaction should in no way commit me to that state.

I am looking forward to learning about Antisthenes (pupil of Socrates) and Diogenes (pupil of Antisthenes). They established cynicism, which is a philosophical school I relate to greatly. It's not what you think. Cynicism is a mistrust of conventional worldly establishments that are contrary to nature. Perhaps the chiefest of these would be government and money, but it would also include many taboos and status symbols. Cynics practiced asceticism (self-denial) and living in accordance with nature. So far I don't know where Socrates and Antisthenes would agree or disagree, but Socrates' arguments in Crito really makes me curious to find out at some point.

I privately wonder if perhaps his real reasons for not wanting to flee Athens were more prosaic, although I would certainly give him the benefit of the doubt if I were able to argue with him, and let him try to show me this was not so. I believe there certainly can be a time when it is good and right that a man should accept death, and perhaps that was this time for Socrates.

I will say that although I disagree with Socrates' conclusions, I do admire several things about this dialogue. First, that Socrates is clearly a principled individual. He seeks to discover what is the right way to live and to do that at any cost (again, taking what he says at face-value). I also admire the stoic way he faces the end. To me the last line is beautiful.

“Leave me then, Crito, to fulfill the will of God, and to follow whither he leads.”

I had never read a book about Thrawn before. This reads like an origin story, but that didn't hurt the story. This stood on its own perfectly well, for it doesn't assume you know anything about Thrawn, and his actions, motivations, and psyche are revealed in a satisfying way. From the first page, he's an intriguing character that makes you wonder: how do things work where he comes from? What are his real motivations for leaving where he's from and showing up in the Empire? What is he going to do next?

This book is a mix of action and psychological intrigue. Each chapter starts with a little prologue of Thrawn's thoughts on a topic, usually relevant to the chapter you're about to read. Most of these are pretty good. A military commander's thoughts would not necessarily be of universal interest if they were always concerned with strategy and tactics minutia that only pertain to battlefields. But his thoughts are more interesting because they are concerned with human concerns that are universal, about alliances, the element of chance, knowing one's enemy, how to be balanced in confidence, things like that. They are always applied to war but they are written such that they apply pretty well to all life. Kind of like reading Sun Tzu's Art of War, but easier to read and more modern. And Western.

As for the plot itself, it's interesting enough. It's kind of like a rags-to-riches story, just substitute power for riches. He starts off at the bottom and climbs up the rungs of the Imperial Navy at a meteoric rate. Lots of people are pissed about this because he's from the Unknown Regions (read: not in the “in” culture) and he's not a human. So everyone's against him. It's satisfying to see someone rise up when lots of nasty people are trying to stop him.

Is this an antihero story? Yes and no. He is an enemy to the rebellion (at least, we know he will be...this story is written before there is a formal Rebel Alliance). He is trying to help the Empire in general...but there are exceptions to this that I can't explain without spoilers. Also, he has a lot more nobility and less pettiness than everyone around him. So there are some likable traits here. This isn't a pure evil character, not by any stretch of the imagination. He's mostly concerned with keeping order and stability in the galaxy and keeping it from descending into chaos or barbarism.

There are two other characters whose lives we follow pretty closely as well. One is Cadet Vanto, who is a nobody from Wild Space who was planning on making his family proud by keeping a nice desk job in the Empire. All that gets up-ended when he is assigned to be Thrawn's translator, as he knows a rare language (Sy Bisti) that Thrawn also knows. The other character is Arihnda Pryce, whose story starts with her parents' small mining company getting taken over. The little back-water planet of Lothal is getting some attention from the Empire, and that's both good and bad. She goes to Coruscant and gets plunged into a world of intrigue, and she also has to climb up many rungs of power.

The world of Coruscant is fleshed out a bit, I like that. I hope to see more of that in future books. As far as the Unknown Regions, it's only alluded to, but I'm pretty sure we will learn more about that in future books as well.

It's hard to explain how good this is. It doesn't sound that exciting. Most of the excitement comes from the action sequences, mostly battles or run-ins with marauders or things like that. But the interactions between characters are also quite interesting. I could see there might be some–the type who just wants pure action non-stop–who would get a bit bored at this, but I don't think most people would. I certainly didn't.

Star Wars reads have been hit or miss. I love Star Wars but let's be honest: lots of the books have been mediocre. This, however, is not one of them.

Also, if you have a chance to listen to the audio version of this book, I highly recommend it. It has very high quality production value. You hear people chattering in the background at a space port, or hear a space battle happening in the background when there's a space battle...crowds, lifts, starfighter engines, everything. It's quite impressive. The voices are very energetic. Thrawn's voice is amazingly velvety, intriguing, soft, and yet...so intense. The only thing I would tweak is, the narrator gets too melodramatic sometimes with how he chooses to inflect “intense” parts. Like, just chill, dude, we're not kids. But that's really the only thing I could find to criticize.

You want to read this. “Do it, and your transformation to the Dark Side will be complete.” Or not, that's cool too.

This collection of short stories and parables has fallen into utter obscurity, despite being written by Tolstoy, of all people. These were written in the period of time after his conversion to Russian Orthodox Christianity. Tolstoy set out to rewrite a collection of Russian folk stories and parables from a Christian worldview. The Christian worldview does come out, although in a subtle way.

Many of the stories are very short, only a few lines. Some of them reminded me of Aesop's fables or fairy tales. I enjoyed how pithy and concise they were. It also revealed an interesting Russian worldview. Tolstoy is just brilliant; I haven't read a bad thing by him yet.

This is science fiction only in the sense that it involves time travel, but not in any other sense. This is essentially historical fiction, where a modern woman, Dana–and sometimes her husband–travel back in time to early 1800s Maryland, on a slave plantation owned by one of her ancestors, Rufus. Every time Rufus is dying–which turns out to be several times throughout his life–she is teleported to him, apparently to help save him.

The first time, Rufus is a small boy and he seems innocent and she hopes that she can influence him to not turn out like his father. The story chronicles Rufus' growing up and changing gradually, and a lot of ethical questions that Dana faces. When should she stop saving him from dying? Is saving him different than killing him? What would justify killing him? If she helps him, is she enabling a slaveholder controlling his slaves, or is it better to try to influence him to be a better version of himself?

The scenarios that unfold are varied and seem naturally fitting. We get to experience, vicariously, so many different aspects of slavery as the story develops. Breeding, being sold, rape, denying education, all the forms of violent and non-violent control and manipulation, turning one's own people against each other, the role of religion, the role of the outside white community, the traveling patrols, the Underground Railroad, the deadliness and uncertainty of diseases back then...the list goes on.

I think this is an example of excellent historical fiction. It gives us a full gamut of the experiences of living back then. It also gives us a wide array of characters, black and white, and shows their different ways of handling all the vicissitudes of that life. The story has great sadness in parts, and that is the overall feeling I am left with at the end, but there is certainly some relief and good things that happen at the end as well.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone with interest in the history of the pre-Civil War South. It's not bloated with too many details–there are just a few here and there as they are pertinent. It's very easy to read and engaging. Each chapter matters in an urgent way. It's full of action and difficult conversations and difficult experiences. But it didn't feel depressing to me at all–just a bittersweet sadness and gladness.

I look forward to reading more of Octavia Butler's work.

This needs a drinking game. Take a shot every time...
- she gets lost in her head in the middle of an imbecilic conversation and the person has to recall her attention five times.
- people wave for an extremely long time.
- she doesn't know what's real.
- she doesn't want to go to a party and then inexplicably decides to go.
- she thinks that she should slow down on drinking at a party and then doesn't.
- instead of actually saying something to someone, she makes up what she would say, and then they would say, for like, ten minutes straight
- she doesn't write
- she lies for no apparent reason
- someone is described as having “fuck-you eyes.”
- “in the hour between the dog and the wolf.”
- someone keeps repeating her name while she gets lost in some incredibly long thought-sequence

This book is largely a tongue-in-cheek commentary on MFA programs and their workshop groups. There's also lots of humorous commentary on the writing process as well. It was pretty funny at doing all this, but sometimes repetitive.

I think this would go into the category of magical realism. There are certain things that happens with this bunny cult that don't make sense...I think we're supposed to accept that and move along without trying to figure it out. I could mostly get down with that. Also, towards the end of the book, there's an increasing amount of blurring the lines between what the protagonist thinks and what other characters know. I suppose this could be part of the magical realism or could be that she has schizophrenia (I guess that's what the ending is revealing?). If she has schizophrenia, I feel this could be clearer. I don't know. It didn't quite work for me.

Unfortunately there's also this one main problem I had. It got annoyingly repetitive how the protagonist does a lot of things that don't make sense and just...doesn't do anything. There's lots of inane conversations (extremely normal, boring conversations full of platitudes and generalities) where there's tons of inner thoughts interspersed between the monosyllables and 1/2/3-word sentences. In fact, most of the whole novel is the protagonist's thoughts. That's something I could get down with, but in this case, her inner thoughts aren't very interesting. They're repetitive, predictable. She's frozen and remains frozen almost all the time. She does change somewhat towards the end though, so that helped. It's just frustrating that so much of the novel is full of non-action and non-talking.

Another problem was that the characters aren't very three-dimensional. Granted, some of the characters are all in her head...but Jonah isn't and the bunnies aren't unless I'm reading it wrong? And they're all so one-dimensional. The most nuanced characters were side-characters, her professors.

So...this was a mixed bag for me. Definitely funny oftentimes, but just too repetitive and not psychologically interesting enough for me.

This was refreshingly good.

The book is structured in a unique way that I quickly fell in love with. There are no proper chapters. The book is composed of sections that are titled with numbers and do not have a page break between them. They are numbered from 1 to 500, and then from 500 to 1. There are 1,000 of them, a callout to the Thousand and One Arabian Nights. The sections are most often a few paragraphs, but can oftentimes be a single sentence and occasionally be many pages.

Each section is like a fragment of glass, and each fragment overlaps other fragments such that a beautiful composite emerges as you step back and gaze. This technique is masterfully employed to communicate a sense of his meaning very often. It helps you know where to stop and to think, where to consider something in its own right, and what's important. He exploits all the uses of this form.

Here's a very small example of what I mean. The second 457: “In Jewish tradition it is forbidden to throw away writings invoking the name of God. Prayer books. Scrolls. Encyclopedias. Garments. Tefillin straps. Even pamphlets or cartoon books. Instead of being destroyed, the texts are interred in a genizah, a burial place for the written word.”

And then later in 454, there is a story of Rami discovering orthodox Jews dumpster-diving in a genizah. A boy's friends hold him upside-down by his ankles as he grabs the books. This is because it is forbidden to tread on the word G-d.

And then later in 444, this passage: “Sometimes Rami would step into Smadar's [his dead daughter's] room and think of it as a sort of genizah too.”

This book is about an unlikely friendship between an Israel, Rami, and a Palestinian, Bassam. These two are real people and McCann went to great lengths in his research of them.

In fact he has gone to great lengths in his research on a myriad of topics that went into this book, including the Holocaust, birds, the Arabian world, Islam, Jerusalem, the West Bank, the partitioning of Palestine/Israel, the history of the State of Israel and subsequent wars, and many other tiny details that he explores in fascinating depth. He takes details about all kinds of things—the death of Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47—the way the Israeli government handles honoring victims on Memorial day—the factories that create the explosives put into suicide bomber jackets—the adoption of the hoopoe as the official bird of Israel—the assassinations of Palestinian literary figures—anything and everything—and places these details in juxtaposition to other details just so that the reader can make all sorts of connections, gain new perspective.

We are told lots of facts, but because of the way the facts are put next to each other, we can step frequently into the world of concepts and philosophy in powerful ways. It's the best of both worlds.

The thing that binds Rami and Bassam together is that each of them has lost a daughter to the conflict. They are part of a group of Israelis and Palestinians that were former combatants but now fight for peace. Out of a desire to hold contradictions together, they name themselves Combatants for Peace.

“It slowly dawned on Bassam that the only thing they had in common was that both sides had once wanted to kill people they did not know.”

Rami and Bassam become friends and end up touring the world together, speaking to all kinds of people—they even eventually go to Germany, a place Rami had previously been terrified of and sworn he would never visit.

The nature of constantly telling their stories—the stories of losing their daughters—is explored from several angles. Here's an excerpt that is probably the first time it is talked about: “He began to understand that it wasn't a performance. His was a beginning without an end. There was nothing theatrical about it at all. He could make of it whatever heaven or hell he wanted. He settled into the repetition: it was his blessing and his curse.”

Did I mention that Bassam, the Palestinian, is a holocaust researcher? And that Rami's wife, Nurit, is an outspoken liberal Israeli against the occupation? This book is full of interesting characters. It gives you a slice of the life of each of the men's wives as well as some of their children and several other interesting Israeli or Arabic figures in history.

The name of this book, apeirogon, means: “a polygon with a countably infinite number of sides.” That is exactly what this book is. He shows so many people's perspectives. I love that. This is one of the things that books do better than any other medium: getting you inside other people's perspectives.

Did I also mention that the author has a fascination with birds and tells countless stories and facts about them? The area is the world's second-busiest migratory highway. More than 500 million birds pass through every year.

Did I mention that another theme is the book One Thousand and One Arabian Nights? And another theme is Borges' idea about the Aleph, a point in space that contains all other points? This book has so many great themes that are expounded on, layer by layer, drip by drip.

I can't say enough to praise this book. When I read the blurb I was worried that the author would come down on one side of the conflict or another. It seems so inevitable that when you talk about the Middle East people can't help but be biased. I was very impressed by how much McCann works to not do that. But this book also wasn't just a reporter writing a bunch of facts. I've read books like that...boring. This was anything but. This was delectable. And poignant. But never saccharine or melodramatic. This was so many things. It has ministered to my heart. I am very grateful for it.

I have read that Steven Spielberg has bought the rights to make this into a movie, although there are currently (as of this writing) no actual movie filming plans yet. That's interesting. I hope he makes a good movie, and I'll probably watch it, but to be honest, this is one of those books that—sure, you could make a movie using its themes—but you'll never make a movie that gives you anything like the experience of reading this book. Some things are made for the medium of the written word.

In order to avoid waxing too long or dramatically, I will simply end the review here, saying I heartily recommend it; I savored it and look forward to re-reading this for years to come. This book is one of my treasures and I will cherish it.

This is the first dialogue in the series “The Trial and Death of Socrates.” It is right before Socrates' trial. He meets Euthyphro in a courtyard. Euthryphro is there prosecuting his own father for murder. This is considered very abnormal–normally it is virtuous for one to side with one's father–but in this case, Euthyphro believes he knows that it is the most virtuous to prosecute his father in this case, for he believes he knows better than anyone what is virtuous concerning piety–that is, what the gods want us to do.

S. proposes having E. explain to him what piety is, since E. is such a big expert on piety, and the main dialogue begins. From the beginning, E. has a huge ego, and S. flatters him and pretends that by having this dialogue with him, S. might learn from him what piety really is and therefore be saved in his upcoming trial.

This is never made explicitly clear, but I got the strong feeling that S. was really being ironic/mocking towards E. It was really quite funny to me as I'm somewhat familiar with Socrates' personality already. He's constantly flattering Euthyphro with saying, “you're totally the most knowledgeable on piety, and I really want to know what answers you have to this question [that I already know from considerable experience is not answerable] so that it will save me in my trial...” haha, as if.

Some context: later on in the trial Socrates will say that he has made many people angry at him because he has interviewed all kinds of people who thought they were wise and discovered by his line of questioning that they were not wise at all. And that's what is really happening with E.; Socrates is being polite about it, but he is showing that E.'s ideas boil down to circular reasoning. I feel like the flattering way he talks to E. is very tongue-in-cheek, and either E. doesn't realize that or goes along with it anyway.

Some quotes that I really liked:
3c “...the Athenians do not mind anyone they think clever, as long as he does not teach his own wisdom, but if they think he makes others to be like himself they get angry, whether through envy, as you say, or for some other reason.” – I think this cultural phenomenon is both amusing and also explains why Plato chose to do all of his famous writings through the words of Socrates instead of himself.

14d “I prefer nothing, unless it is true.” – Quotes like this make me feel that Socrates and I would have been kindred spirits if we could have known each other.

I tracked the main argument of Euthyphro as thus:

12d Piety is a part of justice.
12e Justice is care towards others. Piety is care of the gods, and the part of Justice that is not piety is care of people.
13d Instead of talking of “caring” for the gods, we actually mean more like “service” towards the gods. For we don't “care” for them the way a hunter cares for his dogs or a stablemaster cares for horses.
14d Piety is really the study of how to give and how to get from the gods. My sidenote: is this a good definition? If we compare this to how an underling relates to a general or an aide to a politician, would this hold up? Maybe.
14e So piety is a trading skill between us and the gods.
15a-b We can't benefit the gods at all. They only benefit from our “honor, reverence, and [...] gratitude.” I'm pretty sure the implication–if I'm reading this right–is that they are saying that these are not really benefits. In 14e Socrates mentions that the gods get no goods from us in trade. So it sounds like they are only considering physical goods or tangible services as valid units of trade.
15b Socrates says that Euthyphro's reasoning is circular, that he's really just saying that piety is what is dear to the gods, and what is dear to the gods is piety.

15a-b is where I would diverge in the dialogue. If I were there I would say that “honor, reverence, and gratitude” could actually be what the gods are totally after. That could count as a valid thing to trade to them in exchange. I would posit the example of a parent with children.

Why does the parent raise children? Do they children give them any tangible good, or render useful services to the parent that are commensurate with the vast amount of time and money the parent pours into the child? Clearly not. The parent raises the child so that the parent can have certain experiences, for example, so the parent can witness what it's like for a smaller version of themselves to grow up, and get to see something they are cultivating thrive and hopefully even see the world made a better place by their progeny.

So therefore the gods could do the same with us.

Reading dialogues always makes me really wish I was there to hear how they would respond. I'd like to imagine that someday in the afterlife I will get that chance.

Maybe Socrates would counter by saying, “ok, but why do the gods desire to have those experiences?” I would probably get stuck at that point.

This is definitely a solid dialogue worth reading. One doesn't have to believe in the same gods to appreciate the argument; just substitute the name of the god you believe in or call it Higher Truth or whatnot; the questions are still just as important and we should all ask ourselves what it really is to do right by God/The Universe.

I hope everyone reads this and several of Plato's other dialogues at some point. Contrary to popular belief, it's not hard to read Plato. Honestly, it's extremely straightforward, the opposite of how modern philosophers write just to impress themselves. Plato is very accessibly written, and Socrates' wit and humor make the philosophy go down just as easy as candy.

Too annoying. Lots of dreams that the reader can't possibly know the interpretation of, lots more traveling in the desert, lots more bickering between petty people. Pace of this series was way off what I would have enjoyed. I thought they would be at least traveling to Earth in book 2 but no, by the end of book 3 they have only gotten to the spaceship.

This is the best introduction to the character of Socrates. It has his humor and wit front-and-center, as well as Socrates' own account of the history of his opposers and why they oppose him. He basically explains himself and his whole life. It is also one of the more religious of the dialogues, where he explains why he believes the gods have put him on this earth and how he has a relationship with a god that speaks to him only in the negative (telling him what not to do, but never what to do). It became clear to me from reading this that Socrates was really of the prophet type. Mouthpiece of the gods, speaking truth to power, all that. It helps you really understand his character well. Lots of interesting things here.

Socrates does go to great lengths to make fun of his opposition, which makes it a little weaker than other dialogues, but he's in a courtroom drama, where there are 501 jurors, and it's really kind of a popularity contest. He has to play a little bit more of the rhetorical / persuasive speech skills than he would in a normal dialogue. So this is, I think, fully understandable in the context.

It's a really short and easy read, especially compared to other dialogues. Highly recommended. Just read it. It's part of the “Trial and Death of Socrates” plays, so you may get it as part of a compilation of a few others that are also relatively easy to read and all go together. Pretty much anyone can read early Plato.

Most of my reading is done according to a plan and careful research. There's so many books; I can't afford to waste time on reading subpar ones right? But this book came upon me differently than most.

I was frustrated that day, cut off in a town I didn't want to be in with time I had to kill. I went into a Barnes & Noble, picked this up whimsically, and was suddenly entranced. The narrator felt so familiar to me on a personal level: his honest and open voice, his making fun of his overly sing-songy name, “Jedidiah Jenkins,” his addressing of Christianity in a way simultaneously joking and serious (I thought only I did that?), his wanderlust, and his bold-faced proclamation of loving Jesus (very unusual for modern books not sitting in the Christian section).

Normally, when I pick up a book whimsically, odds are I'm not going to love it. This time was one of two exceptions. (The other is Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. It stood out because her last name was almost the same as mine. I had zero expectation that it would be good. It was.) But this book, right from the beginning, felt like it was by someone who spoke my personal languages. This passage entranced me at the very beginning of the book, The Itch:

“‘The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.' - Henry David Thoreau.

“I have learned this for certain: if discontent is your disease, travel is medicine. It resensitizes. It opens you up to see outside the patterns you follow. Because new places require new learning. It forces your childlike self back into action. When you are a kid, everything is new. You don't know what's under each rock, or up the creek. So, you look. You notice because you need to. The world is new. This, I believe, is why time moves so slowly as a child—why school days creep by and summer breaks stretch on. Your brain is paying attention to every second. It must as it learns the patterns of living. Every second has value.

“But as you get older, and the patterns become more obvious, time speeds up. Especially once you find your groove in the working world. The layout of your days becomes predictable, a routine, and once your brain reliably knows what's next, it reclines and closes its eyes. Time pours through your hands like sand.

“This equation has a crummy side effect: while our child brains are absorbing the ways of the world...mislabeled patterns of survival get swept in as we grow. Bad examples. Wrong thinking. Mistaken assumptions. They get caught in the flow of time through adolescence and carried into adulthood, buried beneath everything else. You watch your dad fly into a rage while driving, and your little brain logs it away. You overhear your mom talking about hell, and something rearranges in your head. A building block placed so deep and quickly covered. We show up as adults, confused by our own thinking, and with time running out.

“But travel has a way of shaking the brain awake. When I'm in a new place, I don't know what's next even if I've read all the guidebooks and followed the instructions of my friends. I can't know a smell until I've smelled it. I can't know the feeling of a New York street until I've walked it. I can't feel the hot exhaust of the bus by reading about it. I can't understand the humility of walking beneath those giant buildings. I can't smell the food stands and the cologne and the spilled coffee. Not until I go and know it in its wholeness. But once I do, that awakened brain I had as a kid, with wide eyes and hands touching everything, comes right back. This brains absorbs the new world with gusto. And on top of that, it observes itself. It watches the self and parses out old reasons and motives. The observation is wide. Healing is mixed in.”

Those last four sentences crystallized, for me, a concept I have wanted to say many times and had never found the words for. Until now. I love it when a book does that to me.

Ok, so what is this book? Plot-wise, a middle-aged man decides to bike from Oregon to Patagonia (tip of South America) in order to find himself and sort through what he believes. The theme is a search for meaning.

These concepts about himself are introduced early on in the book: 1) he went through life with passive decisions, following others, hiding himself. 2) he struggled a lot with how to live his life in a meaningful way, how to balance conflicting ideas like “do what you love” and “follow your passion.”

As his travel down south progresses, the following are also introduced: 1) he had experienced feeling gay since he was a small child, and needed to battle through what that means for someone who also believes in Jesus/Christianity, 2) he struggles with Christianity as a whole.

Re Christianity as a whole, he seems to be influenced a lot by his reading a book about the atrocities that the Spanish conquistadors wreaked on South & Central America. He also meets with a lot of different friends on the way who join him for different parts of his trip (or in one case, a stranger who bikes with him for much of the time). A lot of the changes in his thinking come from conversations with others.

When it came to him questioning his faith and finding new ideas, I was disappointed. The pivotal conversation with others (while ascending Machu Picchu) is so dumbed-down that it's hard to take it seriously. Not that there aren't some good points, but...if we're going to talk about spirituality/religion, I was hoping for more depth. For instance, one of the major shifting points in his thinking is the idea that the Bible should conform to his experiences, rather than his experiences conforming to the Bible. He seems oblivious to what this is called or any of the nuances of it. He has stumbled onto the philosophy of secular humanism: that reality is defined by human beings' experiences. Jed never explores at all whether there are any downsides to this philosophy. Of course, few people are even aware of the name as this philosophy is so dominant in modern Western culture that most people don't realize it's there: it's as invisible as air. Still, I wished Jed would have really attempted to explore his questions of the faith in more detail. He could have read philosophy, apologetics, or the foundational texts of other religions. Or he could have at least tried to explore all the aspects of the philosophy that he and his friends were fleshing out. They never really take any time to flesh things out or try to come up with a coherent worldview; they just end up with a few different disjointed ideas. So, while I have no problem with people questioning their faith (in fact I think it's essential; nor do I assume that people should come to all the same conclusions as I), I was left feeling empty and sad that there wasn't more depth here, both for the sake of me the reader and Jed the person.

Likewise when it came to his sexuality, he never really got somewhere concrete with it. One moment he would act like he was totally going in one direction, and another moment he would go in the other. Okay, it's fine to go back-and-forth on something a while, especially something so important to one's inner psyche. But I was disappointed that he didn't really seem to get anywhere with it by the end of 14,000 miles.

Something else I was halfway anticipating was a character arc where at the beginning, he starts off being wishy-washy with how he makes decisions, mainly following what he is told by others instead of figuring things out for himself, and by the end, he becomes the opposite. But that doesn't really happen. It feels like the book makes these promises—as well as a promise that he's going to really finally confront his mom—but these promises don't materialize.

So, with those criticisms stated, does that mean I hated it? Actually no. The main reason is that he is so open and honest. I don't dislike the narrator at all. In fact he sounds like the kind of guy I would enjoy sitting and having a beer or three with. I would probably enjoy travelling with him. I would enjoy talking with him about all these same issues he talks about in this book. I'm glad he wrote it and I'm glad I read it. Lacking in depth in a couple key areas? Yes. But it fulfilled in several other areas.

I love his descriptions of places and people wherever he travels. He shows people in a way that feels very unfiltered. It's not always flattering. It feels like he tries to simply observe people as well as he can and write down the interesting truth about individuals. I myself would be afraid to write down the level of detail he did (would I offend them?) but I'd like to think I would stick to my guns and do it anyway. I'm really glad he did. It never felt like he was trying to slander anyone: just tell the truth as best he could.

Another area this excels in is showing his inner monologues, his self-doubts. They can be hilarious, and they are very human. Every time that he's camping on some stranger's land and someone approaches them, he thinks, “Oh shit. They're going to run me off or kill me.” And then is usually surprised at what actually happens. He also gets into trouble with not having learned Spanish hardly at all before going down there. Throughout the book that's a theme: he tends to not prepare for things, like, at all. I'm glad that he's perfectly transparent about that and really just puts his weaknesses out there. I wished he would have grown in this area by the end of the story, but oh well, such is life. We don't always grow in every area and it's better that he wrote down the truth about himself rather than pretending like this trip made him into an ideal version of himself. Also, I kind of like that the story shows you don't always have to be a paragon of preparedness to take on great things.

This book really appeals to my love of nature too. There are many serendipitous passages describing the deserts, the beaches, the ocean, the mountains, waterfalls, cliffs, and several species of animals that sound almost magical in their appearance.

In summary, would I recommend this? Yes. It is beautiful and it is honest and it is insightful in many ways, just not some of the ways I expected it to be.

I will close the review out with several of my favorite excerpts—some of the ones that work alright without much context. If you aren't worried about spoilers, then read on and enjoy. May the journey be a rich one.

p35: “With the Internet connecting us all, the rest of the world feels closer, less alien. But I think that's only true in our minds. The Internet does not bring Argentina one inch closer to me than before. That's part of why I craved this trip. Knowledge alone is like an unearned memory, mostly forgotten.”

p43: “As we approached the Golden Gate Bridge, so did the fog. It pushed on and around the bridge like milk pouring into coffee, swirling and taking over. When we rode on the giant red structure, we could not see the water below. Only gray. Cars would appear out of nowhere and disappear behind us. It was cold. We stopped. We were out-of-body present, observing ourselves on the bridge, as if from outside.”

p186 he describes the experience of being on mushrooms and feeling so connected with nature in a full way that he hears a ladybug land on a blade of grass.

p208, talking about Mom making him go to church 3 times a week: “‘Train up a child in the way that he should go, and he will not depart from it. That's what I'm doing.' I thought, Oh, I'll depart from it! Watch me! I resented church and I resented my mom for making me go. Years later she told me in passing, ‘I was a single mother of three kids, no money, no help, no time to myself. Church was the only safe place we could go where I knew you'd be looked after and taken care of. It was the only place I felt less alone in all of this.' As a kid, it never dawned on me that my mother was overwhelmed or frighened or worried about the job she was doing. It never occurred to me that she had complex motives.”

p226: “‘Wow,' Weston said, walking his bike. ‘I trusted that native woman with the weather, just because of how she looked. I thought she was a gift from God, like He brought her to us. I was lazy and just assumed she knew everything. And I had the worst night of my life [sleeping in the freezing rain]. And we were rescued by cops. Cops!' He shook his head. ‘God's favorite lesson is humility.'”

p233, quoting a poem by persian mustic Hafiz:
“Even after all this time,
The Sun never says to the Earth,
you owe me,
look what happens with a love like that,
it lights the whole world.”

p284 - this one needs context to really explain. He has been learning more about the darker side of the United States' history, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs, all of the puppet governments and US-backed terrorists, etc. But then he comes back to the opposing feelings, the antithesis, remembering how beautiful the States are. He merges thesis and antithesis in this beautiful simple statement said at the end of a long dialogue with an Argentinian mom who knows about all of the darkness but still wants to go to America someday. “‘I mean, I've always wanted to visit the US,' she says, somewhat reassuringly. ‘I want to do a road trip across it. It's so famous, to do the US road trip. One day I will. I want to see the empire before it falls.' ‘It is a beautiful empire,' I said.”

It sounds simple, but that one sentence sums up so much for me. Yes, it's an empire. But...it is a beautiful empire.

It's hard to know how to rate this. In this book, Harari starts off with some predictions that humans will try to achieve God status through several God-like powers that are being developed as we speak. Then he goes all the way back in time to the dawn of man and essentially summarizes history through a particular lense: that is, of world religions. These religions include not only conventional religions, but also includes socialism, capitalism, and three types of humanism: socialism, evolutionary humanism (eugenics), and liberalism. He then tries to predict the future religion, which he calls big-dataism. That is the book.I'm a sucker for grand themes and pulling many disparate studies together into grand theories and predictions. So I enjoyed the structure of the book. I like that he tries to predict the future through first understanding history as well as he can. Predictions based on data are not always necessarily right–no prediction necessarily is–but they're a lot better than people just shooting their mouth off based on their limited worldview. We have a much better perspective from trying to understand all of humanity in all time periods and places–that is, to get outside of ourselves. I'm a huge proponent of studying history to understand today.When it comes to all of his conclusions and lenses, it's hard to generalize. Some I thought were insightful and accurate, and others I thought were entirely misguided. And many were in the middle: they seemed accurate but didn't necessarily provide fresh insight. I would recommend this book, for there were multiple insightful ideas here for me and I would guess there would be multiple for most other people as well, although not necessarily the same ones. Many of my disagreements with him, as you will see below, were around religion. He is an atheist and I am not. However, my disagreements with him did not ruin any usefulness of the book. It was still insightful from understanding history and predicting the future, for as he says, in the 21st century, where do you expect most of the world-changing advancements to come from? The religions of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism? Or from science and engineering? In the past they came from the former but in the 20th century they all came from the later, and we can expect that to continue. Hence we need to understand the underlying philosophies/religions of science in order to predict the future with any relevancy at all. It's my goal to understand these and he has helped me do so. I don't hold it against him personally that he disagrees with me about the existence of God, nor does that disagreement in-and-of-itself make this a bad book, although it's certainly tangled up in some reasons that I think the book could be better.So with all of that aside, now, in no particular order, here were some of my observations:His argument that the Theory of Evolution disproves the existence of a soul is a flawed straw-man argument based on his definition of a soul as the root of the word “individual.” While that origin is interesting, there is no reason that souls need be discrete and not a gradient thing, same as intelligence or creativity, and in fact this explanation would explain the relation of humans to animals anyways.He never addresses the fact that science hasn't disproven the existence of the soul/spirit. He acts as if we haven't found it yet, therefore, it doesn't exist. He doesn't discuss scientific bias, and in fact, completely whiffs on the fact that science is, itself, a religion (under his definition of religion used in this book, that classifies capitalism and liberalism and eugenics and big data-ism as religions). He briefly mentions that one could argue that science is a religion, and then says...nothing else about it at all. He just says essentially “no it isn't” and moves on. This was a huge wasted opportunity. It would have completely gone along with his theme to explore that dimension.Large section are attack on religion while pretending to be something else. He classes branding, nationalism, and religions as “fictions” or “intersubjective realities” for they become real by humans believing collectively in them. He ignores that scientific theories are also fictions by this definition.His definition of reality is humanist: whatever can cause people suffering. If we were being generous and assume by his examples that his real definition of reality is what can be experienced through human senses, then that's a little better, but not much. Many things have scientific evidence and can't be experienced. He also ignores any real investigation of evidence of the spiritual/supernatural.He defines monotheists as those who believe that everything that happens to them is for spiritual reasons and claims that therefore all monotheists are childish. In fact he uses scripture as a source for this argument but never mentions that the entire book of Job is dedicated to debunking that every bad thing that happens to us is understandable and because we did something bad. This is a pattern I noticed throughout the book: he doesn't know his Old Testament as well as he thinks he does. Either that or he's cherry-picking intentionally, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt.His explanation of the three camps of humanism and how they played out in 20th century history was useful. This feels like something I should have already known. Liberalism was challenged by two other humanisms: on the right, fascism (evolutionary humanism) and on the left, socialism (Marxist humanism). The great wars of the 1900s were actually religious wars between these three factions of the new world religion.He's insightful that the masses (lower class) won't be necessary to leaders in the future as they were in the past, where leaders were incentivized to care for the source of their labor and armies.Also, good insight that when algorithms understand individuals better than they do themselves, there's a natural step from recommending to you, to deciding for you: agency.The last 5% or so of the book is his prediction of big data-ism: the worship of data. Yet he really only stubs out this idea. He presents what big data is doing to us and the philosophy (religion) that is emerging around it. But he doesn't take the time to ask: what does all of the data lead unto? Just more big data? This is circular thinking so there has to something more. Also, he claims that there is no other contender for the new world religion...really? Seems he could have explored other alternatives or at least attempted to show why big data is superior to others.I don't disagree though that the big data religion is looming and in fact, some of the current events that he's mentioning can be expanded on greatly if you want to read [b:AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order 38242135 AI Superpowers China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order Kai-Fu Lee https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521228712l/38242135.SX50.jpg 59924665]. I highly recommend that for understanding the coming shift in the global economy (no it's not going to be like the automation shifts in the past), the advent of machine learning, what AI really is in different forms, and why it's going to be the US and China who will duke it out for supremacy of the new world battlefield: data.How do I summarize Homo Deus? It seems impossible. I will only say that if you want to understand the present and future better, this is certainly worth reading, and as with anything should be examined and inspected and serve as a springboard to more reading. I appreciate the tremendous work that Harari has put into this and I hope that if he finds the time, he will expand on this even more in future editions.

It has great ideas about intelligence and alternate civilization (which feels it could be explored more in another book). But the plot itself is...ok. I like that the main character in this children's book is a mother instead of a child for once. I like that there are several distinct characters with semi-distinct personalities.

But really, the prose and plot are just so-so, whether viewing this a children's book or an adult's book, it's just not as engaging as it could be.

I will say that the audiobook has a good narrator who nails animated voices that are engaging (and would be good for kids) but without being saccharine or annoying. Very good narrator.

This book is an overview of AI and a study of what is happening right now and some predictions of the near future, coming from a VC (venture capitalist) who has made a lot of money on making smart bets on the future of tech startups.

First, Lee goes into several aspects of AI. He defines the difference between specialized AI and general AI, and explains why the former is burgeoning right now (several breakthroughs have been invented and are now being applied to many industries; we are in the “age of implementation”), but why general AI is still a loooong way out. He also explains what machine learning is and why it's useful.

The first half of the book got a bit repetitive. There were several different examples of different companies and products in the US and China. There was a lot of comparison of how they did things differently. He supplements big-picture ideas with concrete examples from his own experience as a startup founder and VC funder, and this is all useful. However he tends to repeat his main points quite a bit, and at halfway through the book I was beginning to be worried by this.

However the second half really picked up for me. He goes into a few different directions. First he explains why there is a coming jobs crisis (and therefore crisis of meaning for humanity) and why it's different than when inventions disrupted markets in the past. I think he makes very, very good points. He compiles a short list of the biggest disrupters in history and does a very condensed history lesson on them. Then he explains why it's different from even the biggest industry disrupters of history in both its scale and the speed at which it will happen. The numbers discussed by economists and other experts are very startling. And he explains, based on his extensive experience as a VC funder, where he disagrees with the assumptions of the economists, and I considered his points to be solid.

The book then takes a sharp unexpected (but very good!) turn when he tells his own personal life story: how he used to be all about maximizing financial and status success, and only putting minimal effort into his relationships with family and friends who weren't key to his ascending the ladder of “success.” Then he was diagnosed with cancer, and began a journey of re-discovering what it truly means to be human. This part was very interesting and well-done, and ends up directly impacting the last chapters of the book, where he makes recommendations for addressing the crisis of meaning that predicts we will have in the coming unemployment crisis.

He spells out what the currently-recommended solutions are for the jobs/meaning crisis and then posits his own recommendations, which all feel spot-on to me. This is a topic I've spent quite a bit of time contemplating already and it was really satisfying to have someone else put to words what I've been wanting to.

He has so much depth when it comes to the human factors. He's a really unique combination of understanding technical factors, human factors, and how real businesses and government work. Only he could have written a book like this.

My only criticisms are that the first half was a bit repetitive, and personally, I would augment his recommendations in the last chapters a little. In my opinion the creative arts should be another path included in his list of job categories that we need to change our social contract around, and I think it's a mistake to leave those out.

With that being said...this is a really solid read I will be recommending to people. I'm very glad I read it. It has given me a lot of information and a lot of good theories for the world-building I'm doing for a set of sci-fi novels that I have been planning for some time.

Kai-Fu Lee has made a really important contribution to the global understanding of AI and has brought a human element to the discussion that could not be more important. I really applaud him for this work.

One of the most genuinely helpful books on writing that I have read. This unassuming book is really short and most of its 50 chapters are 1-2 pages. There is a lot of solid, actionable advice and lots of quotes and examples as well. This is the opposite of most how-to books that I despise for being overly lofty and abstracted from reality.

As always, Mark Twain is brilliant in his critique of human nature.

I will contrast this book to Tom Sawyer, as they are similar, but not the same. As in Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn is brilliantly hilarious. It has a large section of it dedicated to fraudsters, while Tom Sawyer is focused more on everyday people in a small town. Huck Finn includes many small towns as well but focuses more on a black man, Jim, who has runaway. Most of the book is about Huck and Jim, but there's a wide cast of other characters, and two fraudsters take up several chapters. The scams they pull over on people are comical, tragic, and sad.

The book has a considerable commentary, especially in the later half, on slavery and morality–often overlapping. It's a bit odd/uncomfortable to read Huck's perspective, which is that by helping Jim escape, he is doing something terribly wrong. His conscious is constantly pricking him to turn Jim in. While this is uncomfortable to read, that doesn't make it bad. This book is simply showing us Huck's perspective as it is–Twain never preaches a morality message with his stories; he simply describes human nature and lets us draw our own conclusions.

I will say though, it was an odd sense of relief when Huck finally chooses to just commit himself to freeing Jim--and therefore commit himself to being destined, in his mind, for Hellfire. Such an odd feeling, reading that.

I couldn't quite bring myself to give this five stars. What bothered me was that it dragged in places in a repetitive way, especially towards the end. For example in the ways that Tom insists on book-romanticizing things...it was hilarious at first, but it just got really repetitive.

With that said, this book really helps you get outside of yourself and into someone else's thoughts and experiences, and for that it is brilliant, let alone the comedy, the characters, the dialects, and the rich exploration of river culture in Missouri.