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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2332 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 28, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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So, what are you reading?

Still on This Star of England and The Mysterious William Shakespeare. My appreciation of Shakespeare is certainly increasing as a side effect.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Everyone's read her debut, The Secret History, and loved it. I've previously read her second novel The Little Friend, which was a bit mid. 200 pages in and The Goldfinch seems closer in quality to History than Friend. It's very affecting and I'm curious to see which direction the story takes.

This past week I finished two books: Dark Age by Pierce Brown, and The Canceling Of The American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott.

Dark Age was better than Iron Gold (the previous in the series), but still wasn't up to the high standard set by the first trilogy. I didn't hate the book, but it still took a concerted effort to make myself finish it which isn't a good sign. I'm on the fence about getting the last book. On the one hand, if I didn't enjoy the new trilogy much thus far, I probably won't change my feelings on the third book. On the other hand, enough interesting stuff happened in this book that I do kind of want to know how it ends. We'll see.

Canceling was about what you might expect, especially if you read The Coddling Of The American Mind (which I have). In a lot of ways, Canceling is kind of like a part 2 to Coddling, showing how the problems of the previous book have grown even more in our society (mainly at universities). The picture it paints of things going on in America is not going to be news to anyone who frequents this forum, although there were specific events I hadn't heard of. Unfortunately, the authors' thoughts on what one can do to fix the problems (the main thing I was interested in with this book) weren't really anything that was actionable for me. Not that it's useless advice, but it's 95% focused on parents and people who work in education (both teachers and administrators), with the other 5% being "before you make a donation to your alma mater, ask them if they do XYZ to promote free speech, and decline to donate if they don't". But I already don't donate to my alma mater, so that's not really something I can apply. Overall it was a decent read, but not as useful as I was hoping.

Among other things, mainly finance, I'm reading Titan: The life of John D. Rockefeller.

The world's first billionaire. It's not bad. Yet to see what turned him into something of a sumbitch. Money, power, and perhaps the sense that whatever he did could be justified by the contributions he made to his church and other charitable ends.

I really enjoyed this book. Ron Chernow is my second favorite biographer after Robert Caro. The main thing that I recall from this book is how Rockefeller's dad was a con artist and John D spent his whole life trying to run away from that fact.

Yes, the early part of the book shows a lot of disgusting behavior from his dad. That would deform someone's psychology, especially in times with no therapy.

The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

So far, not overly impressed. The author's use of Japanese terms to capture the essence of his own esoteric concepts seems forced and false. Sometimes it seems like I'm reading the journal of Chris McCandless (if things hadn't gone wrong for him.)

But I'll finish it. Another book given to me. Yours sound more interesting.

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