Tag: What I’m Reading
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I will finish this book at some point this year, hopefully. There’s just so much here and I’ve been in a terrible reading slump. I’ve gotten so much from just the introduction, written by Michael C Fisher. “A man of letters knows only a little about some major human concerns, but insists on relating what…
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Fun fact. I actually searched for the unabridged version of this book. Apparently I missed the joke at first… got me there. The inside of the book jacket starts with this: “Despite our clever linguistic abilities, humans are spectacularly ill-equipped to comprehend what’s happening in the universe. Our senses and intuition routinely mislead us.” And…
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John Koenig starts his 2021 book with a Steven Wright quote (the comedian not the knuckleball pitcher) The book is divided into six sections, likely how I will study this book is to give an overview of each facet of the human experience underrepresented by our common vocabulary: Koenig notes that these words he’s coined…
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The introduction goes into the math of if we celebrated Christmas every day. It’s obviously meant to be tongue-in-cheek. If I were in a better mood, I’d probably be chuckling. The part about how much room it would take to have free range turkeys for turkey dinners everyday was actually pretty hysterical, though. It goes…
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I’ve read four books by Rob Sheffield. Two were excellent (“Turn Around Bright Eyes” about Karaoke and “Love is a Mix Tape” about, well, mixtapes), one was OK (On Bowie), and the one on Taylor Swift (Heartbreak is the National Anthem) was honestly mediocre. I have some notes on Heartbreak is the National Anthem live…
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From “Poetry and History” This is brilliant: “…it is not the poet’s function to describe what has actually happened, but the kinds of thing that might happen, that is, that could happen because they are, in the circumstances, either probable or necessary.” He continues, “The difference is that the one [history] tells of what has…
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I remember reading this before and it’s still so true. Here’s what literary agent Noah Lukeman says about an MFA program in creative writing. “Take the $35-50K you’re going to spend ont he degree, buy yourself a good laptop and printer and a bundle of paper, and go off to a cabin and write. At…
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The introduction is called “Surviving Usefulness” which is a fascinating title. It begins with this great quote: “Redemption preserves itself in a small crack in a small crack in the continuum of catastrophe.” – Walter Benjamin The whole first paragraph is excellent. I’d copy down the whole thing, because I have things to say every…
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Great essay by Anu Atluru on the concept of “Franchise Thinking.” Atulru writes: “Franchise thinking is the tendency to fit everything into ideas that already have names, audiences, and tribal alignment rather than to look for new ones.” The big bold point in this essay: “Too many people are making something already known more known…
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Henry David Thoreau About Wasting Life on Details : “Our life is frittered away by detail.” I believe by this he means details that don’t actually matter, like minutiae and trivia, such as is stuffed into every extra neuron of my poor, rotten brain. On a Deacon’s Personal Effects Being Auctioned Off: “Not long since…
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I’ll be completely honest, I did not finish this book entirely, as I didn’t agree with many of Wendell Berry’s conclusions. However, that being said, there’s plenty of stuff I do find very interesting that deserves highlighting. Several notes from reading just a bit of Wendell Berry’s Unsettling of America … Some quotes: “One of…
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We begin with a Leo Tolstoy quote from 1897. I’ll copy it down in its entirety for reference: “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he…
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The title essay stays with a great line: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” It’s long but it shows why she went nuts at one point in the 70s. The world was an absolute mess. I’m sure it’s going to get worse than that soon enough. This essay really made me think about…
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Didion got the book title from a line of a W.B. Yeats poem. These lines really are poignant today: “Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned,The best…
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Sagan’s final section of Chapter 2 outlines four main reasons for “a concerted effort to convey science.” In other words, why do we need everybody to get into some sort of science? And this line is especially prescient in 2025, “…if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the…
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Right in the introduction, there’s this: “In any systematic treatise two things are essential: first, there must be some definition of the subject; second, in order of treatment but of greater importance, there must be some indication of the methods by which we may ourselves reach the desired goal.” This whole piece was a response…
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Excerpts From “Reflections on War and Death” by Sigmund Freud (1939), which is freely available on Apple Books here: https://books.apple.com/us/book/reflections-on-war-and-death/id494504141 “…for our conscience is not the inexorable judge that teachers of ethics say it is; it has its origin in nothing but ‘social fear.’” “Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and…
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Quotes from the book: Benjamin Hoff and His Conclusion on What We Can Learn from Pooh Corner: “Within each of us there is an owl, a rabbit, an Eeyore, and a Pooh. For too long, we have chosen the way of Owl and Rabbit. Now, like Eeyore, we complain about the results. But that accomplishes…
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I’ve always liked these big idea books, suggested by RJ of the flourishing actually, because they do what they suggest. While I gave away Star Trek book, as I didn’t really get anything out of it, the movie book and Sherlock Holmes books were enjoyable though. I didn’t care for some of the film selections.…
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Yes, I love Taylor Swift. She is one of my absolute heroes. If you have a problem with it, well, I can’t help you… Quotes from the book Rob Sheffield on His First Impressions of Her 1989 Album: “The songs were great—they were Swift songs—but each one made it harder to comprehend why she was…