Linn Abraham

An interesting third person take on Humans, from the eyes of a zoologist. At places there are more details than you care for but which are important for completeness, I guess. I wanted to read this before I read the Naked Man.
Quite eye opening into understanding human behavior, culture etc.

This book is great for its content, a 101 on the history of philosophy and delivering it through a stranger trying to teach a young girl through letters and discussions. It probably fills a vacuum that existed for an enjoyable way to get introduced to a lot of philosophy without it becoming too academic or dry. The book summarizes philosophical thought in a chronological way - starting from the ancient Greeks and ending with Darwin and Freud - leaving probably nothing in between. Maybe utilitarianism? Or is it even a separate school of thought? I am not sure.

But I realized that such an introduction was something I was really missing. There are all these big words you here in academic discussions - existentialism, materialism, nihilism, mysticism, modernism, Hellenistic thought - along with historical terms like the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, the Baroque period and so on. This book helps you to make a mental map of all these different schools of thought by connecting it with the time it arose in history. And using that navigate the uncharted waters of philosophical thoughts and discussions. Or put in another way the book helps connect together lot of philosophical ideas in sequence like pearls on a necklace. I also liked that this book doesn't fail to mention some of the lesser known thinkers whose ideas have nevertheless been useful in the overall development of philosophy.

When living in the age of scientific rationality you take a lot of things for granted and might have a sort of disregard for the thinkers of antiquity whose many ideas have since been proven wrong.
But now I wonder, would the age of scientific thinking have arose in a world that was had not matured enough in its philosophy? In that regard, the book has definitely been an eye-opener of sorts for me. There are lot of quotable quotes in the book and I would definitely refer it again.

But I have to admit that the reading experience was not that great. I was not at all interested in the fictional story that the author tried to weave in between the philosophy lessons.

I heard the audiobook version. It brings back memories of adventure stories like Robinson Crusoe and such. The main thread of the novel is about a group of people embarking on a trip to a unknown island as part of an anthropology experiment. Parts of the narrative were gripping. But this probably made me expect a twist in the end much like Robinson Crusoe but none came. Some of the ideas taken up for discussion are interesting ones indeed. A small gripe I have is that the main characters are not based in Kerala although the book is written in malayalam. At places it feels like listening to a translation. But may be this has something to do with my bias rather than the author.

This was a really satisfying book to say the least. After some of the initial chapters, I raced off to finish the book. The word “habits” in the title might have been a turn off for me initially. Who wants to read a big book about developing good habits? And maybe I only persisted after the first few chapters because Meera recommended this. Throughout the book, Clear uses the term Habits quite generously to include any repetitive action that we might do in our lives and which is basically a learnt response to any situation or problem in our life that we have to face more than once. That is what makes this book so useful. It teaches you one thing and one thing well. A general framework for habit engineering and through that - engineering your own life. Willpower is something like a bottle of water on a desert journey that you should be conserving every ounce of. “Engineer your life so that you won't have to use your will power”, is one of the key takeaways of the book. The idea that it is not the lack of motivation that has been holding you back from doing a lot of things, that you have always wanted to do but just couldn't get around to doing, is indeed a refreshing one. It really is a must read for someone who is starting off on the journey to self improvement.

I like the book more for the concepts and systems than the way it has been presented. I believe it could have been done much better. I need to read and highlight it once again to clear a lot of doubts ad for more understanding.