Rate the last book you read

What, you mean you don't want to be reminded Bill is gay every 0.5 seconds? You some sort of homophobe?

 

Finished the Richard Matheson short story collection. I enjoyed it but I was getting tired of the style of story towards the end. Almost all of them were in that Twilight Zone style, and it got a little boring.

 

Next up Tender is the Flesh. An Argentinian novel about a society that has turned to mass commercialised cannibalism after a virus makes animal meat inedible.

 

I read a recipe book. The ingredients were too expensive, therefore, 0/10.

 

Dune of Frank Herbert Puntuation:5 of 5
It was a great story , some characters are really interesting even the antagonists(The first time i like the antagonists), there are a little of politics, ecologist messages, science fiction.
Then again some times the events advance slow but it worth it cause describe on detail, all what surround the protagonists and it is one of the parts incredible of the book.

Spoiler

My favourite character Liet-Kynes

 

Ninja Skills = 10/10

Definitely one of the best ninja manuals I've ever read. Antony Cummins is a great author.

 

Just finished reading playing for keeps: Michael Jordan and the world he made by David Hallberstam.
If you liked the Netflix documentary the last dance than you should definitely read this. Even if you are not a basketball fan it is a brilliant read. It tells the story of not only how Michael Jordan changed the fortunes of the Chicago Bulls franchise; but also how he totally transformed the sport of basketball in general. Absolutely loved it 9/10

 

Haven't read it but the BBC podcast The Forum did an episode on it. I remember them saying on the podcast that the book drifts between reality and fantasy.

 

Zealot by Reza Aslan
9/10

As with all Reza Aslan books it's well written and referenced. I noticed it gets one historical aspect wrong but for the most part, it presents a theory about the historical Jesus that I found convincing.

 

The prince of Niccolo Machiavelli 5/5
It has a lot of norms of what a good prince should follow to have a great state , there is no dialogue , just facts and opinions about what happens to others and what they did wrong on their times.
The book it is short and understandable in great parts.
Recomendations: Know something of the empire of Rome and anothers symilars cases to not get lost.

 

The Republic by Plato

3/5

I think the fact that some people overhype this book so much kinda ruined it for me. I mean surely I shouldn't have expected a person who lived over 2000 years ago to have the most up to date ideas on... Well, anything really, but least of all about how society should be run. But there are so many people who like playing lipservice to famous philosophers - even going as far as to argue that the ideas presented in the Republic totally hold up today and haven't aged poorly at all - that I kinda expected more of Republic.

I didn't agree with most of the ideas in the book. Even worse than that, I felt like a lot of the times the arguments made for the bad ideas felt inadequate and easily debunkable. Then towards the end of the book some of the bad ideas presented relied so heavily on the premise of agreeing with the earlier bad ideas that it was hard to even take them seriously considering that I had already rejected the premises.

There were some pearls to be found too. The famous cave analogy for one still is one of my favourite philosophical ideas. The part about justice in human soul felt more interesting than the part about justice in the state. The overall fact that the book's whole point was to prove that the pursuit of justice is worthwhile in and of itself was refreshing in this age of moral relativism and hedonism. What stood out most to me was the accuracy with which Plato described the way how democracy regresses to tyranny. I had thought that populist leaders rising from class struggle within democracy and becoming dictators was fairly modern concept, but either it was already present in ancient societies, or Plato foretold it with eery amounts of accuracy.

Another thing that I enjoyed about the Republic was that just like with any good book on philosophy: even though I disagreed with most of the message, I was still able to get a lot out of it, because disagreeing lead to me having to think to myself why I disagreed and how to provide counterarguments. I've even toyed with the idea of going through it again this time slower and taking notes on which arguments seem sound and which don't and maybe writing a couple of essays on my overall thoughts on the book's ideas. Considering that this is one of the foundational books of western philosophy, it's a worthwhile read even if you were to read it just to disagree with all of it.

 

The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
I like to go in to a reading as cold as possible, so I can evaluate based strictly on the text itself. I don’t read reviews, I don’t even read the blurb on the back if I can help it. This one, though, I already had a significant relationship with before I even thought of picking it up. I knew Pullman wrote it as a direct rebuttal to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. As such, I knew Christians hate it and atheists love it. I knew there was a movie but, no surprise, the book is considered to be better, and there was at least one polar bear. What’s the deal with that polar bear, was what I wanted to know. I expected it to be preachy and slightly overrated, and I was looking forward to picking out the most objectionable content and making fun of oversensitive Christians and pretentious atheists with their overblown superiority complexes alike.

The polar bear is Iorik Byrnison, and he’s the shit. Not “a shit,” which is a bad thing, but “the shit,” a good thing. Kind of like how in UK English, if something is “bollocks” you don’t want any part of it, but “the dog’s bollocks” is very cool. I just follow the rules, I didn’t make them up. Iorik Byrnison is the shit. There’s some other cool characters as well. The aesthetic is great, I now see how Pullman helped popularize Steampunk. I dig the world building, and the plot was solidly entertaining, I was pleasantly surprised in that respect. I also found preachy sections that are a drag, and things I suspect some Christians object to that are silly, so that meets my smug expectations. But there are legitimate problems with the substance of the story, whether you care about Christian theology specifically or just morality in general.

One intentionally controversial message, “lying is totally okay, a good thing, even,” is a terrible thing to tell children. I know some people like to promote human’s ability to lie as an important example of our intelligence, and we like to say Christians lack nuance when they place a moratorium even on little lies or lies to bad people, but here’s the deal; you do not build stable, mutually beneficial relationships on lies. We have to be able to trust one another. Asshole Objectivists believe they can lie to lesser people. Sociopaths think nothing of lying. Is that the wonderful atheist utopia we’re promoting here? No thanks. Another, perhaps accidental message I don’t particularly care for is, “your parents are awful, even literally Satan, you totally can’t trust them.” It’s probably just a consequence of a child protagonist on a high stakes plot, but come on. There’s better ways to get meddling parents out of the picture than making them a sadistic kidnapper and an indifferent Prince of Darkness. But if those elements are too subtle, there’s the part that says “maybe original sin is a good thing.” Now, there’s an argument for having the knowledge of good & evil being a net positive. We can have that discussion. But to frame it in simple terms, “actually sin is good,” that’s silly. For one, you’re buying into the theists’ assertion that sin, God, etc. is even a thing, for another, you’re not accounting for the literal meaning of “sin” is “to miss the mark.” We can debate about what the mark should be. Does anyone really want to miss it, though?

If I wanted to get hypercritical, I’d say the protagonist has some Chosen One Mary Sue vibes but honestly that’s not enough to ruin it for me. I was entertained, I enjoyed myself, I’ll give it 4/5 which is as good as a book can reasonably expect from me. I reserve 5/5 for the books that changed my life. But I’m not going to let my kids read it, or encourage them to when they’re teens. I hear the next two in the series are even preachier, I can’t wait.

 

I’ve read “I Am Legend” and a few others. I’ve heard his influence on the horror genre can’t be understated, but I’m not versed in it.

Machiavelli was basically a political activist. He wrote “The Prince” as a satire against the Medicis. Turned out to have some pretty solid advice for mass manipulation, if you’re a cynical, scheming jerk willing to do anything to get and keep power.

@ShadyPerson
Plato lived a little after the Persians were run out of Greece. Athens was still the only democracy, and it had existed long enough for the patterns to emerge. Yeah, it was better than naked tyranny, but still vulnerable to wealthy, charismatic personalities. Plato clearly admired the Spartan system, for whatever reason, though they took discipline and totalitarianism to atrocity-level extremes and didn’t have a bulletproof system against tyranny either. I like Plato for his observations on justice and morality, and I think a lot of philosophy assumes he was at least partially on the mark.

 

I think with a lot of these old philosophers people fall into the trap of revering knowledge merely because it is ancient. Plato was absolutely groundbreaking for his time and there are some real treasures that are valuable to this day. Despite that, they simply didn't know as much about the world as we currently do and so we are going to be at a higher level of sophistication then they are. Romanticisation would have us glorify them as all-knowing demi-gods despite the fact that many of their ideas (such as organizing a society based on Plato's Republic) would absolutely fail.

 

Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliot

This is practical literature, not meant for entertainment but to get to truly know yourself, your shadow, your inconscious, so you can finally get past your own obstacles, fears, hidden pleasures and achieve your goals. In that sense I give this book -which I've read over 3 times- 10/10 I've been practicing for a few days and the results are incredible.

 

The Web of Meaning by Jeremy Lent - 5/5

This is a book about paradigms or worldview, which define how we interpret and understand reality, what we believe is real, what we believe to be moral, and much more. This book is about deconstructing the Modernist paradigm and redefining what it means to be "alive," and what our place in the universe is. He uses cutting edge research in complexity science and neuroscience to show how the reductionist views of Descartes and the over-privileging of left-brain detail-oriented logic by the West has basically led us to the point we are now as a society where we've lost meaning and the sacred. We've lost sight of the big picture and of the relationships that connect, and this is one of the key factors in the meta-crisis the human species is now facing.

I can't recommend it enough. It'll challenge you, but it is rewarding if you're willing to peak outside of your own worldview.

 

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