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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   746 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 8, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Any good homeschooling resources that TheMotte would recommend?

I want to start homeschooling my two elementary school aged kids from this year (one is early elementary, the other late elementary). What are some good resources for learning at home? I'm interested in online tools (Khan Academy, stuff like that) but also premade programs and curricula, mail order/correspondence programs, anything like that. Also, any resources on being an effective homeschool teacher without formal training in education.

I want to teach the usual basics skills, but I'd also like to teach formal logic, Latin, computer skills/coding, and handwriting.

I think there was also a recent thread about homeschooling experiences on here... I'll have to dig that up as well.

I remember doing Sing, Spell, Read, and Write, and it worked well -- I still remember several of the songs -- but don't know what an updated version might be. We did Saxon math, for some value of "doing," but I much prefer Khan Academy. Some school districts have an official Homeschool Liaison, who will recommend something. Also, kids can often take electives at their local public school for free or very cheap. I took swimming, and was no good at it, but it was a positive experience.

Also, any resources on being an effective homeschool teacher without formal training in education.

This is the absolute last thing you should worry about. Don't bother even thinking about this at all. I have a degree in education, and education courses are entirely useless for homeschooling. They don't really teach classroom management, but if they were going to teach a useful skill, it would probably be that one. There was an entire semester long class about teaching philosophies, where we would look at a teaching philosophy, such as the one with an ideal tutor following an ideal child around and making everything a learning opportunity for him, and would invariably conclude each time "but we're training to be public school teachers, so while interesting, this has pretty much nothing to do with us." There was an entire semester long class on specific educational acronyms. We learned to think-pair-share 28 times. None of it would be useful to you at all.

How do the kids feel about the change?

This is the absolute last thing you should worry about. Don't bother even thinking about this at all.

Thanks, this is encouraging.

How do the kids feel about the change?

They are excited about it because they'll get to focus more on the things that they enjoy, but as young children they probably don't fully grasp it. Do you have any advice how to make the transition smooth? It will likely be accompanied by a move.

Check out this pdf by the Mathacademy called the Mathacademy way, very thorough document they themselves use, also get a subscription for jr once the kids are old enough, will sort all your math needs.

If your kids are smart(I assume they are) and want to learn Latin, they should be able to work through a unit a week of Lingua Latina per se Illustrata with the accompanying primer, assuming there's a tutor to keep them on track and assign homework(yes, homework is mandatory for learning a foreign language). Latin tutors are (relatively)cheap and you can get them from any university with a classics department.

My memory of what books I used is pretty foggy, especially so for early stuff...but Abeka books were the main resource my mom used for writing/grammar/early math I believe. Saxon math for later stuff. We were going at it without internet though, and I think Khan academy is already going to a better job for a lot of stuff. Both Christian based resources, from what little I've researched there are equivalent secular curricula floating about but it has been a while since I've looked.

You should check out Lingua Latina per se illustrata for Latin. Very cool way to learn the language IMO, although online it seems to be a battle between this method and traditional grammar texts. Seems like it would be perfect for kids.

Thanks. I'm especially interested in the textbook series, it looks more interesting and serious than others I've seen, like the Minimus series.

I apologize in advance because what I'm about to say isn't what you asked for but I think it's important to comment.

Independent of how good of an idea homeschooling was in the past, I think it is going to become a much worse idea in the future.

One of the joys of my job is that I get to see every single slice of the population and something I've noticed is that young people are nervous wrecks theses days (especially post-COVID)...this is known - but also that a lot of home schooled kids are a lot worse.

I suspect this is due to decreasing opportunities for independence and socialization and regular school is one of the last bastions of that. This trend will likely continue to worsen as people spend more time online and less time touching grass.

I'm sure the research will catch up at some point, as it has with social media and COVID pauses, but at that point some people's lives will still be fucked.

There are plenty of reasons to avoid traditional school (safety, poor quality, woke bullshit) but the benefit is probably worth it and if you are going to home school you'll need to dig out chances for your kid(s) to socialize adequately.

if you are going to home school you'll need to dig out chances for your kid(s) to socialize adequately

Yes, this is key. We're hoping to have them out of the house doing something with other kids their age at least 3-4 times per week, plus playdates, playing in the park, etc. One of the two is very outgoing, so we're already thinking about how we're going to handle this and looking for homeschooling groups and activities that are not tied to schools. We very much want to avoid the "house arrest" model of homeschooling.

Homeschoolers IME(and I know a lot of homeschoolers) go one way or another. There are plenty of homeschoolers who are ready to be functional adults, not nervous at all, mentally healthy and well rounded... at 16. There are also homeschoolers who are the opposite of that at 25. There is much less in between.

Do not go it alone when homeschooling. Do not delay normal developmental milestones, even if you think there's a good reason for it. If you are homeschooling a boy, he needs to be working for a non-family member and in sports the whole time(girls can usually handle most of the things these accomplish for themselves if allowed to). Shelter a level less than you think you need to.

if you are going to home school you'll need to dig out chances for your kid(s) to socialize adequately.

This was always the case. If you're going to homeschool, you have to make sure you socialize your kids in other ways. When I was growing up, my parents did that through groups with other homeschoolers, through church, and through other youth activities (scouts, 4-H, etc). I don't think that it's worse than before or anything, I think that this was just something you always had to do if you were going to homeschool your kids.

I agree it was always important but my fear is that it is going to be increasingly harder to do. :/

I see... I misunderstood your comment.

I think there was also a recent thread about homeschooling experiences on here.

The thread in question (including my contribution)

Thank you!

Books I read in 2024

I read 89 books in 2024, 38 in Spanish. This is way too many to summarize like fivehourmarathon did below, but I'll share some of my favorites and least favorites.

Best Fiction Book: The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin

I was very impressed with the Wizard of Earthsea, and I'm very impressed with the sequel, even though the only character that returns from the first book is Sparrowhawk.

In this book we follow Tenar, a lonely priestess of dark gods (implied to be something like the shadow of our collective unconsciousness), who lives in a decaying temple complex at the edge of the world. Tenar's life seems destined to follow a path towards petty vindictiveness and hatred. However, after an encounter with the tomb-raiding Sparrowhawk, Tenar begins to find her heart moved by compassion and curiosity, forever changing her relationship to both the gods she is supposed to serve, and her small and lonely world.

There's not much that goes on in this book, it's only 180 pages. But within these few pages, Le Guin manages to craft a masterful feminine counterpart to the masculine Jungian confrontation with the shadow in the first book. And her descriptions of the beauty of the world, through Tenar seeing it for the first time, nearly moved me to tears.

Best Non-fiction Book: The Vital Question by Nick Lane

I'm a biologist by trade and training, but have never studied or really thought carefully about abiogenesis (the biology of the beginning of life on earth) carefully before, nor about the reason Eukaryotes are the way they are.

Lane starts off by making the observation that there's some curious aspects of our cell biology that don't necessarily have to be the way that they are, but in fact are. The first of these is the proton pump: why do all cells, down to the most primitive bacteria, derive their energy from proton gradients across their cell membrane. This suggested to Lane that where life initial evolved had naturally occurring gradients for primitive proto-cells to harness. This, combined with some other favorable geochemistry leads him to settle on the "white smokers", low temperature alkaline vents, as the origin place of life. These vents also contain sponge like rock formations, mimicking compartmentalized cells, and also are and were a good source of carbon and nitrogen.

The other half of the book is dedicated to the study of Eukaryotes or "complex life". Humans, plants, and fungi all contain cells with very different cell biology from bacteria. Our DNA is membrane bound in a structure called the nucleus, and our cells contain thousands of bacteria-like structures called mitochondria that generate energy (mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell). Because of biochemistry and genomics, we actually have proof now that mitochondria are descended directly from bacteria (they contain bacterial membrane lipids, and their genes have homology with bacterial genes). Lane's argument in this part of the book is that many of the features we see in modern Eukaryotes were developed to help the genomes of the two organisms live together. The nucleus was developed in response to a transposon invasion from mitochondria (hence why our genome is filled with so much "junk" DNA), and sex also helps to reduce mitochondrial/nuclear incompatibility (because mitochondrial DNA evolves much more rapidly).

I'd be really interested in seeing/hearing a counterargument to Lane's, as he has me to pretty convinced. I'll also be eternally grateful to him for reminding me why I love biology so much, during a period of my PhD where the day-to-day has caused this love to fade a little. Biology is awesome.

Most Subversive Book: The Universal State of America by Simon Sheridan

This was a category filled with bangers, from ARX-Han’s Incel to the various works of Michel Houellebecq that I read this year. However, I think Sheridan’s book has these beat because of the scope and depth of its critique: both Incel and Houellebecq focus on specific problems afflicting the West as whole, and while they do land on a coherent theme (materialism=bullshit), their scope is limited to our civilization. Sheridan’s work on the other hand flips the conventional understanding of civilization as we understand it on its head entirely.

The book starts by explicating a Jungian/Campbellian perspective on the microcosm of an individual life as viewed through the lens of a heroes journey. In the classic structure of the heroes journey, there is some call to adventure (Gandalf knocking on Bilbo's door in The Hobbit), some journey in which transformation and self-actualization take place (the adventures that Bilbo participates in on his way to the lonely mountain that lead him become more courageous), and a return to home (back to the Shire in Bilbo's case).

Sheridan posits that our lives have this same structure, and so too do the "lives" of civilizations. In this way he impressively unifies Jungian psychoanalysis with the comparative history done by Spengler and Toynbee. He then uses the unification to help diagnose "psychological" problems that may be unique to our Western Faustian civilization. Just as people tend to suffer from specific neurosis if they are foiled a specific point along their heroes journey, so too do civilizations.

This was a perspective I had never seen before, and has really inspired me to dig further into the comparative history, as well as attempt to understand Jungian archetypes on an individual level. One of the problems with this analysis, which Sheridan acknowledges, is that we really don't have a lot of historical data about many civilizations. Most of the analysis of this book is centered on an analysis of the classical and modern faustian civilizations. I think I would have appreciated examples from others. Ibn Khaldun did a similar historical (but without the archetypal stuff) analysis of Muslim and other states, and Spengler mentions at least one other civilization in Decline of the West. The lack of this analysis makes it hard to know what is specific to the classical/faustian case and what is actually archetypal.

The other thing I would have liked more of was an explanation as to the difference between the child/orphan, orphan/adult transition. Especially given the take-away message at the end of the book, really having a clear distinction between these two transition points is important for understanding the diagnosis of the psychological state of our current civilization.

Best Book with Philosophy Book Club: Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist

McGilchrist's central thesis is that we are divided individuals: each hemisphere of our brain has a different way of seeing the world, and these two "ways of being" are often fundamentally incompatible with each other. The left hemisphere takes an incredibly detailed, but mechanistic and often abstracted view of reality. The right hemisphere by contrast is better at taking a big picture view of things: it is through this hemisphere that we understand art and music, appreciate individual differences and make sense of our own existence at a fundamental level. In McGilchrist's view the proper relationship between these two hemispheres is that of Master and Emissary (his central metaphor). The right hemisphere notices some facet of experience, the left hemisphere interrogates that aspect of experience in a more mechanistic and rational manner, and then this is in turn reintegrated back into the holistic experience of the right hemisphere.

However, in our society, this asymmetry has been broken. The left hemisphere is fundamentally unable to understand the perspective of the right, and as McGilchrist has chronicled in this book, has gradually been taking ground from the right hemisphere. This has lead to a society with an inability to treat others as human beings, rather as mechanistic flesh robots, and the loss of meaning in religion, and the arts. The master has been led away in chains, to return to McGilchrist's central metaphor, borrowed from Nietzsche.

This book touched on a feeling I've been having for a long time about our society. Since my freshman year at MIT, where I stopped being satisfied with good grades, fast times, and material consumption, I've been skeptical of the materialism inherent in almost all answers given to us in our search for meaning. I remember a particular moment when I entered into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and saw the light shining down onto Christ's tomb from a skylight. I was immediately filled with a sense of wonder, and a conviction that there was something about the place that was divine. Yet not a minute later, my mind was filled with sneering skepticism about the engineering of the building being designed to give me that experience. The backlash to that backlash was a moment that I think changed my life: I no longer wanted to be the kind of person that would dismiss profound spiritual experiences because I could explain them mechanistically. Yes, there is a place for logic and rationalism in our search for truth, but only in service to our intuition and faith in something larger than ourselves. Maybe there's a reason why almost all societies have posited something along the lines of eternal recurrence and reincarnation. Maybe there's a reason why we feel so depressed in the modern West without our traditions and spiritual practices. Maybe science isn't the only way to truth.

I'm not sure exactly what to change about my life as a result of this book. Specific actions, in any case, seem to be the domain of the left hemisphere, not the right. Rather, I need to shift my worldview. Less focus on metrics and deliverables, or more on living differently. Less "rational" self-help, and more reading of thinkers like Kierkegaard, Fromm, Unamuno, and of fiction. More connecting with individuals, online, in real life, or through literature, and less with abstract principles.

I'm also very grateful to have read this with Tessa, Amanda, Dylan, and Logan. Philosophy book club keeps bearing fruit.

Best Book Originally Written in Spanish: Historia como sistema y ortos ensayos de filosofia by José Ortega y Gasset

This short book, and its titular essay were by far the most interesting things I’ve read in Spanish this year (although a lot of the fiction perhaps tugged at my heartstrings more). In History as a System, Ortega y Gasset, who is famous for his other essay collection: The Rebellion of the Masses, posits that any systemic attempt to construct a universal philosophical system is doomed to fail. He takes us through two totalizing historical systems that have failed thus far: faith in a Christian God, and the rationalism of enlightenment. I could add other examples of Rome’s faith in its civic institutions, or faith in the God of the market as well. For Ortega y Gasset, these totalizing ideologiees are doomed to fail at somepoint, because human society is always changing. Rather, we should build a philosophy around the idea of change itself, hence history as a system. This meshes well with Simon Sheridan’s book, and my increasing conviction that a focus on stories and narrative arcs of individual and the societies they live in is the way to understand the world, not “rational” comprehensive doctrines.

Of course the big flaw of anything Ortega y Gasset writes is a lack of depth. I’m left with many questions about how this sytem of philosophy works, and very little deeper exploration. This will be something to dig into in 2025.

Best Reread: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

I’ve written a larger post defending George R. R. Martin’s work from some pretty unjust attacks from other substackers. While I understand the frustration with the man’s inability to finish his series, what we have is one of the best pieces of fantasy ever written, with many different layers of theme and characterization. My re-read focused on the second half of the series, which slows down the main plot substantially, but widens the scope of worldbuilding, and deepens our understanding of the lives of primary and secondary characters.

Best “Normie” Book: What You’re Looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama

Although it might be a stretch to call a book translated from Japanese a “normie” book, for few Americans read literature in translation, much less in other languages, the plot of What You’re Looking for is in the Library is straight out of whitepill land. The story follows five different people in a subdistrict of Tokyo who are all experiencing life crisis. Each of theme checks out a book from the library that helps them to reframe their crisis as an opportunity for growth and fix the issue that they have been struggling with. Feel good, simplistic, and perhaps a little naive, but not preachy at all, and was an extremely easy and heartfelt read.

Most Dissapointing Book: The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

Man I really really wanted to like this book. I absolutely loved the Magician's trilogy, and the Magicians itself is probably on my top ten all-time list. The existentialism and angst that worked so well in the modern setting of the Magicians really doesn't fit in the King Arthur setting. I think part of this is because the two stories are not archetypally aligned: the Magicians is a story about overcoming decadence and hedonism in a society that's transitioning from adulthood to old age, King Arthur is a story about a traditional hero fighting back against the darkness is a society that's just starting to know itself (child to orphan transition). The beats that worked so well in the Magicians about ennui and meaninglessness just don't fit here: there's PLENTY to do, and the narration's suggestion otherwise is grating.

I think this archetypal misalignment kind of dooms the book, but The Bright Sword also has other serious problems. The plot is a mess: there is no clear arc, the characters just do stuff. Which was perhaps a deliberate attempt by Grossman to capture the disorganization (personally and politically) following the death of a great king. This unfortunately fell flat for me: the conclusion of every mini-arc felt random, unearned, and irrelevant as we moved on to the next adventure out of nowhere. Interspersed between these arcs we get some flashback chapters which I quite liked, but also messed with the pacing of the story.

Finally, and this might be controversial, but I really did not appreciate the insertion of "current political issue" into the themes of the book. The trans member of the round table was actually fine, although I wish the focus had been more on the conflicting gender roles rather than gender identity (our society's obsession with labels rather than actions/roles is a continual frustration for me). What was not fine was the rebranding of the Saxon invaders as "refugees", and the implication that the britons should have just let them in and embraced the resulting melting pot (with obvious implications for Current Year). This bourgeois attitude towards immigration misses all the suffering brought about by two groups of very different people competing for the same land, and implies that current worries about immigration are totally unfounded because it has happened so many times before. Yes it has, but it wasn't very fun for the native Britons (who basically no longer exist, and have not since the Norman conquest of Wales).

Worst Book: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

I’m not actually sure why I wasted my time with this YA smut trash, but you definitely should not follow in my footsteps. This book was in close contention with Laura Gallego’s Memorias de Idhun, but somehow managed to have even more of a Mary Sue protoganist, even lazier worldbuilding, and even more retarded love triangles. At least the characters sometimes have to face consequences for their actions in Idhun.

Full book list

when I entered into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and saw the light shining down onto Christ's tomb from a skylight. I was immediately filled with a sense of wonder, and a conviction that there was something about the place that was divine. Yet not a minute later, my mind was filled with sneering skepticism about the engineering of the building being designed to give me that experience. The backlash to that backlash was a moment that I think changed my life: I no longer wanted to be the kind of person that would dismiss profound spiritual experiences because I could explain them mechanistically.

I have a very similar set of views / experience to this I'd like to share.

I became an atheist when I was 11. Like most of my fellow gen Z's who converted to atheism, I snuck my nose up at all things religion. Beautiful churches started to feel like their was deception seeping through the walls. Thankfully I've always kept my child-like curiosity, so I was never hit with the overt cynicism a lot of kids my age had, but that's a different story. My overall cynicism has begun to wane over the last few years. But I had an absolutely striking experience while in Japan this last year that really made me start seeing the wonder again.

I was at Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto at around 8 at night by myself, and I wanted to see the full shrine before the bullet trains closed at 11 because my hostel was in Osaka. So to be able to satisfy both conditions of:

  1. seeing the whole shrine, and
  2. Not sleeping on a Kyoto sidewalk late at night

I decided to run the shrine rather than walk it. But as I started to run, I noticed these beautiful sub shrines with saisen-bakos. There was something about just running bast these beautiful pieces of architecture like it was just a background really bothered me. Like I was missing the real point of the shrines, and possibly a very fundamental human experience. So instead of running by each of these shrines, I decided to to stop at each and every one of them (I think there were about 30 of them) to do a Shinto prayer that a local friend of mine taught me.

At first, doing this felt extremely awkward, like I was trying to fake religion or something. But then as I decided to do what every self-help Youtube video has told me to do, say something I'm grateful for. So each shrine became a combination of a Shinto prayer and a gratefulness prayer. And at some point, this process of running and praying became extremely meditative. And I started to feel a connection to what my pre-11 year old self would of called God. I still don't believe in a Christian god per say, I'm more of an Agnostic at this point, but I do think I felt what people across all religions feel when they go to their religious place of worship to pray. That moment had a pretty profound effect on me, and my appreciation for religious spaces is tremendously higher than it used to be.

Tombs of Atuan is probably my favorite from the Earthsea cycle. Closely tied with the first book. Also, 89 books!

Earthsea just kept getting better and better for me, truly a gift of a series and especially the fourth and fifth books that came out many years later.

I haven't actually read tales of earthsea so I might have to give the series a reread. Maybe check out some of Le Guin's other works as well.

Yea I read the first book in 2023, so it couldn't compete on this list. Would have been a hard decision otherwise.

I'm pretty happy with it. It's not the most I've read: I read 95 books in 2020, but the pandemic and being unemployed the summer before I started grad school meant that I had a good three months with nothing to do but read, so I feel like that year was an exception. I also read a few graded spanish readers that year, and much more "snappy" non-fiction (think things like atomic habits or Cal Newport) which I now find not very appealing.

Reading a lot of books isn't as hard as it seems. The average american spends something like 4+ hours on the internet+TV. If you take 1 of those hours and convert them into reading every day you get 365 hours a year. At 50 pages/hour, that's 15k pages a year, or about 50 300-page books. I read slightly faster and slightly more, but also a significant amount in Spanish, which is slower. So probably 2 hrs/day at an average of 50 pages/hour. That's about 30k pages. If I look at my goodreads, I read 33,885 pages total. I keep more detailed stats for Spanish. Looks like I read for a total of 227 hours for a total of 11k pages, which is about 45 pages/hour. All very do-able for the average Mottzian. It just means largely giving up other forms of entertaininment, like video games or TV, and perhaps more importantly, not being a workaholic.

2020 was my best year as well funnily enough, but even then I maxed out at 35 books. I feel like at that level I don't retain a whole lot, although writing some mini-reviews like you have seems like a good idea. Thinking about my average day, there's plenty of space to squeeze in more reading without giving up anything in particular. Your posts have given me some motivation!

Do you have a good book recommendation on understanding Jungian Archetypes?

I think a good starting place is Modern Man in Search of A Soul by Jung himself. Another (albeit more Christian focused book) is Meditations on The Tarot, which explores these archetypes through the 22 major arcana of the Tarot.

That's funny, I just finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being two days ago, and I'm 20 pages from the end of Rejection. Earlier today I re-read this article by the author of INCEL about Rejection. Is it worth picking up?

I loved Ted Chiang's second collection Exhalation, I must pick up Story of Your Life.

I've never read The Handmaid's Tale, what did you think of it?

I've never read The Handmaid's Tale, what did you think of it?

I really enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale. I thought the setting was interesting, and I found it to be surprisingly hopeful at times (given that it's a dystopian fiction work). Shame that the show became such a travesty, but I never have high hopes for book adaptations.

If you enjoyed "The feminist" in Rejection, I think you would really enjoy Incel.

I did not like The Handmaid's Tale. I found the premise to be absurd, the protagonist unlikeable and the writing uninspired.

I had 2 terrible fucking weeks of bad output and zero discipline due to new years, had a lot of people visiting Rajasthan, I went out every other night nearly, so back on the thing now, my aim is still the same of 180 xp of mathacademy where 1xp should take you 1 minute which means 3 hours, 2 hours each for boot.dev and this book learning web design for frontend. I got like 2 good days. Did not workout, rehab or meditate at all either so overall terrible week, worse since I started this all back in November.

I did sleep earlier yesterday, wake on time, and bang out math and backend yesterday. I have three more days left in the week, so I am aiming to get the remaining three right. I hope by next week I can have four good days of my six-day week and sleep on time.

I will also step back from culture war posting, just not worth it, a lot of it is fake too, I spoke with this adrian dittman guy who everyone thought was musk about NRx so that was funny. Logging this for posterity more than anything else. I have a therapy session scheduled for next week, my sessions are mostly about my productivity and to ensure that I abide by the plan and my timetable, I log what I do daily for those reasons.

Apologies if my post has typos, I did a 5-hour math session just now, it was supposed to be 3 as each xp should take 1 minute but I kinda felt under the weather today so it dragged on, took 5 hours to get 180 xp.

I understand nothing about the mathacademy commentary here but I encourage you to continue pushing self-discipline.

Appreciate the sentiment, consistency of any kind and self discipline are of utmost importance at least for the coming years for me.

Math academy is where I learn math from, you should do 1 xp in a minute but I took way longer as I was not mentally sharp.

I quit drinking cold turkey 4 days ago.

I feel mild anhedonia, experiences I normally enjoy are muted or feel like they're happening to someone else and I'm only watching, if that makes sense. I have too much energy during the day and it's hard to relax fully in the evening. My appetite has dropped a lot, but I still want to eat because I've increased my lifting recently. It's kind of the way you feel hungry when you have a cold. You feel your body's need for sustenance, but no foods are particularly appealing. My libido has dropped considerably, though that may also be due to the extra fatigue from increased lifting. In the evening, light is too bright and noises are too loud, kind of like when you have a bad hangover. My baseline stress level feels higher; on a scale of 1-10, I was previously around a 3 or 4 most days, and now I feel like I'm stuck at 6 all the time. Sometimes I suddenly feel exhausted during the day and want to rest, but I'm too wired to actually relax before bedtime, sort of like when you've had too much caffeine to sleep.

On the bright side, my feels like it's working at 200% speed. While I was doing well at work before, now I'm absolutely crushing it. I don't have heartburn or any other gastric trouble anymore, I don't have much appetite for junk food, and I find temptations to my various vices almost trivially easy to resist. Getting up in the morning is getting a lot easier. I have the focus and the patience to listen to chat with my kids in the evening after dinner. I can handle more chores. I can take care of my wife better. I can control my temper much more easily. I spend probably 1 hour less per day lying on the couch. I picked up a physical dead tree book and started reading it for the first time in many months. I'm not thirsty all the time, and my body doesn't hurt as much when I wake up in the morning. My heart rate gets back down to the low 50s when I sleep at night. My sleep quality is much better. And maybe best of all, I don't feel the sense of guilt and self-loathing I've learned to live with every night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up. That's probably what keeps me going each day more than anything, I don't feel like I suck anymore.

I was (am? well, hopefully was) a 5-8 drinks a night kind of guy which, while clearly not good, doesn't really seem like "real alcoholism" when you google alcoholism and read stories from people downing a fifth or two of vodka and blacking out every night. But that amount was apparently enough to slowly change my mind and body over months in ways I hadn't even realized, and I'm dealing with the aftermath now. It's very... sobering.

I wrote this as a personal reflection and thought I'd share it in case any other folks are on the same path.

I think here in Japan (where if I am not mistaken you also live) drinking is much more seen as normal--I almost never hear anyone talk about alcoholism (アルコール中毒者 or アル中) except as a joke. No doctor has ever verbally asked me about how much I drink (though it's on the forms that I fill in) and none have ever told me to stop drinking unless I expressly asked "Do I need to not drink with this drug?"(antibiotics.) Then it's a reluctant ”お酒はだめ" (no alcohol). Never for how long, never a recommendation on lifestyle choices. Booze seems just part of the culture here--which is bizarre in a way when you think of how many people just can't drink in Japan without going full ゆでだこ (an oldish term meaning boiled octopus, referring to the redness of face many get after consuming even a little booze).

At my tops I was at 4-5 a night, typically 2-3 beers and then a couple of vodkas or whatever I had on hand (bourbon usually). When I quit for a month at the end of summer I....didn't feel much different. The main difference was in my morning self; when I rose I felt more rested, more clear-headed, less dubious about whatever I had said or done the night before. My wife took a less-than-helpful stance in telling me to just have a beer as she insists I am much more personable and, probably, interesting, than when sober. "It's like you're at a funeral," she said one night as I sat listening to my family speak Japanese. I think this has more to do with my default self, which is fairly quiet and reflective and not willing to jump into conversations that aren't directly related to me (especially if they're in another language). I find I am typically also quite functional on this much, making dinner, putting away dishes, setting the dishwasher, sorting out the kitchen, all after 4 or 5 drinks. Then I would crash.

My worry was twofold: Was this affecting my health? But also was this an unbreakable habit? I think drinking like this does affect health in well-documented ways if consistent, if it's a habit, but in my case it was a habit I was able to break with a bit of willpower--the first few days (where you are now) tended to be the most difficult, simply because the whole act of drinking had become ritual. I would suggest (without having myself done this) to substitute a new ritual (maybe involving a non-alcoholic drink?) which you can adopt to replace the drinking, and in this way stave off that sense of something missing (if that's what you feel) in the early evenings when the news comes on.

I am no longer teetotaling, but like to think I am more aware now of when I drink and how much, and consciously limit myself. All this as commiseration and a wishing you luck in whatever your goal ends up being.

Edit: With doctors, on reflection, it may not be that booze is so much part of their culture as it maybe the Japanese tendency, even among professionals, to not want to introduce any sort of discord into a moment. Saying "Don't do xyz" could be met with resistance. So they assume, I suppose, you already know, or will read the papers they give you, without having to say it directly. But now I'm armchair theorizing.

Booze seems just part of the culture here--which is bizarre in a way when you think of how many people just can't drink in Japan without going full ゆでだこ (an oldish term meaning boiled octopus, referring to the redness of face many get after consuming even a little booze).

This is caused by the accumulation of acetaldehyde, a toxic intermediate product of alcohol metabolism, in the blood. They're literally poisoning themselves.

The ritual aspect is a huge part of it. Since I'm WFH, my routine is: finish last meeting and clock out (lol Japan) -> pour drink -> family time. I think I use it to help me transition between my work and home life since the shift can be pretty jarring. I've started going on a "pseudo-commute" where I go for a 20-30 minute walk directly after work before coming back home and going full dad mode. That seems to have helped.

I'm hoping you're right about the first few days. This morning (Day 5) I've felt the best yet, so perhaps the worst is already behind me. Though when quitting addictions and habits, I find that it will feel like smooth sailing for a bit until some unexpected stressor pops up, and then the temptations will come back stronger than ever in that moment. So I'm trying to be mindful of that.

When I've gone for my company-mandated health checkups here, I usually get a mild, friendly chiding from the doctor about my liver and my drinking habits (and also my weight... BMI 26.0 is pretty fat in Japan). It might have to do with my clinics being in hip, modern areas of Tokyo where the doctors are all younger. My experience with older docs here has been that they mostly just want me to GTFO ASAP.

Also chuckled at your wife's reaction. My wife also thinks I'm fun and outgoing when I drink, and she says that she thinks it's cool that I can hold my liquor far better than any of our family friends. I think you're right that drinking is seen as just part of (male) life here, although I've also spent a lot of time wondering how that's so considering the high rate of alcohol intolerance among Japanese.

Congratulations on the victory! I don't struggle with drinking myself, but I have a similar struggle with eating sweets so I get how hard it can be.

I was (am? well, hopefully was) a 5-8 drinks a night kind of guy which, while clearly not good, doesn't really seem like "real alcoholism" when you google alcoholism and read stories from people downing a fifth or two of vodka and blacking out every night.

Just a word of caution here: minimizing one's behavior is itself a red flag for alcoholism. My brother in law was an alcoholic, to the point where he just died in December at only 38 years old. But the entire time he insisted that he didn't have a problem, and that he didn't drink as much as (insert example here of people who drank even more excessively than he did). So I would just encourage you to avoid the temptation to say "well my drinking is ok because X".

Regardless, well done on the progress! Keep going strong, brother!

Thank you. And you make a good point. I have also had early deaths in my family due to alcoholism, so I try to be very critical of my own rationalizations. Still an uphill battle though. I'll try to post about it again in a few weeks.

I quit drinking cold turkey 4 days ago.

I assume you're talking about Wild Turkey on the rocks.

Yes, but I actually like it neat. I have a bottle of Wild Turkey 8 in my cupboard that I'm trying not to think about right now, ha.

Seriously, great work. Not just in quitting alcohol, but in writing this up so that you can remind yourself of all the benefits of quitting and all the reasons you quit in the first place.

5-8 drinks every 24 hours is alcoholic level. Most men I know who like alcohol seem to drink at least 2 or 3 every night, probably more on weekends. Even that amount seems excessive to me. An expensive habit, isn't it? I don't drink much, but the price is one reason why I want to cut down even more on beer drinking in 2025.

And to co-opt your thread: what does The Motte think about moderate drinking? One glass of red wine a night for heart health and cholesterol and whatnot. I must say, I am skeptical and have been skeptical for a while now. Those were longitudinal studies, and it could have been that the type of person to moderate their drinking to just one drink a night is also doing other healthy stuff.

Thanks, I appreciate it. And yeah, it gets really expensive. Never start drinking scotch or cognac, boys...

Re your question, I mentioned it in another post, but listening to the Huberman Lab episode on alcohol helped me quit. He actually talks about the glass of red wine a day idea here. tl;dl the effect of the good compounds in red wine is so small that you'd have to drink a ton of wine to get any benefits, and the physical effects of alcohol are so negative that there's really no "healthy" amount. But he does acknowledge that you should weigh the social and QoL benefits of an occasional glass or two against the effects and use your judgement (e.g. a glass or two of wine at wedding is probably okay of you're not an alcoholic).

what does The Motte think about moderate drinking?

As with almost every single thing, I think it's likely to be a marginal effect. Seed oils, a bit of booze, grassfed beef, some vitamin or other, high fructose corn syrup, caffeine... whatever. I think properly measured these things all pretty much blend into the background and have no meaningful impact on general health, wellness, physical ability, or longevity barring an actual significant deficiency or severe overuse. Stay reasonably lean, move around a bunch, pick up heavy things from time to time, and that'll get almost every bit of predictable benefit that you can get from health choices.

Every time I dig into studies that say otherwise, they appear to be complete garbage.

(For the record, I think drink at least somewhat too much and expect that it comes with at least some adverse risk down the road - I'm not trying to come up with some cope for why I'm actually totally fine.)

what does The Motte think about moderate drinking?

My vaguely remembered understanding is that, not only are their observation studies in people, there are also experiments with animals and a proposed mechanism. I think that makes the recommendation stronger than the typical associations drawn in nutrition science.

That said, I'm not going to drink less, or indeed more, because I think it'll reduce my risk of heart disease. Alcohol has enough negative effects for me that I can't see myself ever drinking more than I do now, which isn't much.

See for me, I like drinking occasionally well enough, but when I read the recent headlines about alcohol and cancer, the studies were about women who had two drinks every night. Which is a level I literally can't imagine, not so much because I don't drink that much, as because I can't manage to do anything that consistently. I can't remember to wear a wedding ring every day, or take vitamins, let alone have two drinks every single night.

@ActuallyATleilaxuGhola , if you could quit with no problems I wouldn't worry about alcoholism, but I would put 5 drinks a night at a problematic level if you weren't able to quit it.

My final push to quit for a while was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast about alcohol. It's not just "not good" for you, it's not just "bad" for you, it's really, really damaging to your body (gut, liver, and brain) in ways that AIUI scientists didn't even fully appreciate until relatively recently, even at what are commonly considered "safe" levels like a 1-2 drinks a night.

I realized that while I used to be able to accommodate a bit of light drinking in my life because my life had more "slack," I was now older and had significant responsibilities at work and home, so I really didn't have excess time and energy to spend on alcohol anymore.

That level is almost certainly associated with real risks for liver and cardiovascular diseases, but my bigger worry would just be trajectory. It seems to me that if someone can't go down from five drinks per night, there is a pretty significant chance that they will eventually go up instead, and that this is a ratchet.

I was just thinking during my recent holiday illness how much it would suck to have a nicotine addiction and need to figure out how to manage that on top of being unable to eat or sleep.

I was (am? well, hopefully was) a 5-8 drinks a night kind of guy which, while clearly not good, doesn't really seem like "real alcoholism"

Speaking as someone who drinks occasionally, that really looks like alcoholism to me. Good to hear that you've been able to go cold turkey.

Have you considered naltrexone? It might be worth getting some on hand if you feel like going back on the bottle.

Yeah, definitely alcoholism, though unfortunately there are people who will gatekeep the term and claim that you need to get blackout on 20 beers a night or something. IMO it's more about the effect that it has on you mentally and physically than the volume of alcohol, and the effects on me were becoming increasingly negative.

I hadn't heard of naltrexone, but I'll look into it. That said, quitting booze is part of a bigger "detox" I'm trying to do. I'm also planning on cutting down my caffeine intake (2 cups of coffee a day) and my sugar intake to find out what my body's baseline is like.

I'll pile on for naltrexone as a happy user. I use it per the Sinclair protocol, detailed at https://www.sinclairmethod.org/what-is-the-sinclair-method-2/. Modern psych training is to prescribe it daily in the morning, which makes my meds shrink worry about me when I say I'm doing something different, but she's happy enough to see me keeping a log with numbers going down, and "once daily as I leave work because that gives me an hour before drinking" is close enough to her "once daily in the morning" for her to shrug.

I will endorse it more as a method to get back to a healthy relationship with alcohol, and enable abstinence if you want it, without slips causing a relapse, rather than a cold cure for addictive tendencies that lead to alcoholism. Probably if you do get abstinent with alcohol this way, it'll be by going California sober and substituting with other psychoactives, which could include psych meds. The Caliph has a good writeup at https://lorienpsych.com/2021/02/23/alcoholism/, as you'd expect.

I will say that it's to AA what scalpels and antibiotics were to leeches, in my opinion. It's a shame that the euros are ahead in this regard.

Katie Herzog of Blocked and Reported fame (who TracingWoodgrains was formerly working for) came out as a big proponent of naltrexone, apparently she has a book coming out about it as well. Seems like pretty promising stuff.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sea-change/id1743666262?i=1000653826427

Every Book I Read Last Year

I set a goal of reading 26 books last year, or approximately one every two weeks. I did not meet that goal. Probably primarily because I chose to read War and Peace while annotating it for a friend. I also read snatches of a lot of other things, but only included stuff I read more or less cover-to-cover (I’ll admit to skimming sections of Yellowface and Stranger in a Strange Land between about the 50% and 85% marks).

Honorable Mentions I did not finish: Seeing Like a State, which was brilliant and I’ll get around to finishing it later, but I only read it in boring meetings and I didn’t have quite quite enough of those where I wasn’t involved; The Good Soldier Svejk, which is good but I got bored of; Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Songwriting I still have like a half dozen songs to go, but it’s not really that good and I got out of the rhythm of it; I worked my way through a pile of Platonic dialogues, but I try to stick to only counting it as finishing a “book” if I’ve gone cover to cover as bound at the printer otherwise I'd have to start thinking in pages and then wordcount; ditto, I suppose, the King James bible, in that I read passages but not the whole book; I started The Savage Detectives while walking my wife around the mall but haven’t got back around to finish it; I started Where Men Win Glory, Krakauer's biography of Pat Tillman, which is good but I forgot it at my parents house at some point and never got back to it. I also don’t “count” audiobooks towards the goal, though I quite enjoy them and listen to them pretty constantly.

Razzmatazz! I devoured Chris Moore’s novels when I was a kid, but this was painful to read. His schtick just doesn’t work anymore. I keep meaning to reread his novel of Christ’s lost years, Lamb, so I can review it for themotte, it really is a brilliant time capsule of mid-2000s Morally Therapeutic Deism. Would not recommend this one though, trying to be sensitive to historical traumas of prostitution while also playing it for laughs leaves you with neither.

The War Nerd Iliad Loved it, brilliant. A prose translation of the Iliad, what I admire about it is that it has a strong interpretative view of what the work means, and he sets out to give the reader that view; where so many academic translations get so caught up in accuracy and euphemism that they fail to give much energy. Highly, highly recommend, you owe it to yourself to read this one.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Excellent book, deservers all the praise it ever got. It filled me with nostalgia for when great literature could also be fun. It’s a book that has a real political and philosophical message, while also being a perfectly fun adventure story. Back in the day a masterpiece could also be a bestseller.

From Hell Great book. Boy is Alan Moore weird. I keep meaning to look more into the theory behind it.

Sevastapol Sketches Around here I got off track to the goal, because I made the mistake of starting War and Peace. But I told a friend I would annotate it for her. I kind of stalled on it, so I went and read Sevastopol Sketches to kind of get a win in the books. It was a great pick me up, and reading it added a lot to reading War and Peace so I was glad I did it. It’s interesting seeing prototypes of a lot of the characters, Nikolai and Andrei and Berg showing up in miniature. Would highly recommend it if you’re a Tolstoy fan.

Cheated A book about the Astros trashcan scandal in Major League Baseball, it is a high-mediocre sports journalism book but a bunch of anecdotes stick with me today. If you liked that era of baseball, you’ll like the book.

Day of the Oprichnik I hated this book and didn’t get it, but I think it’s because I’m not Russian and I don’t find gross-out gore or porn interesting.

Trust the Plan A book pretending to report on the QAnon phenomenon, but it mostly got so many things wrong that I only got through it because it was mercifully short. I wasn’t, ultimately, any better informed about Q after than I was before.

Aeneid The Dryden translation. I prefer older translations of classics generally, both because they tend to aim for actual poetry, and because they believe in what they’re writing about. Maybe not the most accurate translation from the Latin, but the translator thought that the story had value and meaning beyond as a museum piece, which gives it more energy.

Yellowface This was the worst book I read this year. Turner Diaries for the anhedonic members of a college Women of Color Collective.

And The Band Played On Brilliantly written, and I learned a lot about the AIDS crisis and gay culture. A really great example of writing, in that I would bother my wife by reading out passages that were alternately horrifying and hilarious, it captures the tragedy of plague without ever letting go of absurdism and fun. It was amazing how many personalities turned back up like bad nickels for COVID, and how the actions taken to combat COVID largely map onto the AIDS crisis as things that would have worked for AIDS, but didn’t for COVID. I expect we’ll see the same cycle again, always fighting the last war. Perhaps a consequence of Gerontocracy.

Path Lit by Lightning Really nicely written biography of Jim Thorpe, a well done piece of sports history, and I was thinking later while listening to Lonesome Dove on audiobook about how time periods intersect. Lonesome Dove is set in the West in the 1870s, Newt is around 20 by the end. Jim Thorpe was born in 1887. Jim Thorpe’s father could have been one of the sad Indians in the background of the cattle drive in Lonesome Dove, Newt (assuming a natural lifespan) would have lived to read headlines in the Montana newspapers about Thorpe’s exploits. Thorpe meanwhile, is just on the edge of modernity for us: one of the first modern Olympians, the first president of the NFL, an early Hollywood fixture. He’s just on the edge of having run into people that I could have watched on TV, and then he is just on the edge of having known rebel Indian chiefs in the old west.

Master and Commander What can I say about this that hasn’t been said before? He does such a good job of giving a feel of how crazy the world his characters inhabit is. A firehose of exposition without a single speech.

Stranger in a Strange Land When I read Dune I felt like I had suddenly discovered what Star Wars had ripped off, Star Wars was just Dune with less thinking. Then I read Stranger and realized that Dune was just Stranger if the author was terrified of human sexuality.

War and Peace My favorite work of literature. A masterpiece. It contains all of human life.

King Rat I read it after watching Shogun with my mother, and wanted to revisit Clavell. This was so much better than I thought it would be. Absolutely perfect book. Read it. The strongest indictment of capitalism I’ve ever read, and a love letter to it all at once. Clavell was a master of writing books that are deep and engaging adventure stories.

Stepford Wives Really fun Halloween book, and it’s funny how much of it holds up, but at the same time how much of it never makes any sense at all.

My Brilliant Friend Read it because it was ranked so high on various best of the millennium lists. I can see why it ranked so high: Ferrante pulls you into her world, head first. Beautifully written, and consistently engaging. I can’t wait to get to the sequels this year. There’s an amusing irony to the debates, which in America center on whether men are sexist for refusing to read this brilliant book by a female author, and in Europe mostly revolve around which man is the real Elena Ferrante.

On the Edge The further I get from this book, the less I think about it. Junk food in text form.

The Price of Peace A Singaporean educational propaganda book about Malaya during the Japanese Occupation in WWII. An angle of WWII we don’t normally get in America. Fascinating to look at, but not something I’d recommend. Mostly fascinating for examining the message the propaganda is trying to get across, and for considering different viewpoints of WWII.

Sad Cypress An old Agatha Christie, just something I got as a gift. A nice little treat.

Il Gigante A biography of Michaelangelo around the David. Picked it up at a church flea market, it was mediocre, but I finished it anyway.

The Message Ta Nehisi Coates new book. I’m buying copies of it for all the Nice Liberal Jews in my life. He makes a powerful case for why the core values of American liberalism are incompatible with support for Israel as a Jewish ethnostate.

I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I’m probably not. Right now, in addition to struggling through Plato, I’m loving Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey. It’s not the most traditional translation, but it’s so wonderful, the language feels like sipping an icy sprite on a sunny day.

For 2025, I want to read some self-help books, strange as that may sound, to get some of the books that are always being recommended. I want to read more science fiction, I haven't been able to get into the genre in a while. I want to get around to some more of the recommendations people made here for graphic novels. Basically, I'm in the mood for lighter fare.

The Good Soldier Svejk, which is good but I got bored of

One of my favoritest books, but I wonder if it survives the English translation (if that's what you read). The original is written in Czech, but not just any Czech but Czech-German jargon with ample addition of obscene vocabulary from other Slavic languages, Hungarian, etc. I read it in Russian translation though one day I hope maybe to be able to read the original.

I’m not Russian and I don’t find gross-out gore or porn interesting.

I think the point of those books (and many of Sorokin writings in general) is how well all that gross gore is mapping to what have actually happened and happening in Russia. But it's quite hard to understand without experiencing that life and culture for a long time. He's also a masterful stylist and often imitates some literary and cultural aspects of existing works, which is hard to appreciate I guess in translation and not being part of the culture.

I want to read more science fiction, I haven't been able to get into the genre in a while.

If you liked Stranger, it arguably isn't Heinlein's best work. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is more widely highly regarded, and Time Enough For Love is more polarizing but more highly regarded by many.

Basically, I'm in the mood for lighter fare.

If you're not averse to books for tweens and teens as being way too light, Heinlein's "juveniles" (my favorite was Citizen of the Galaxy) and juvenile-accessible novels (especially Starship Troopers, Double Star) were pretty good for what they are.

I was thinking of picking up Starship Troopers next. Stranger is the most leftist of fantasies, Troopers is often pointed out as borderline-fascist, so I want to see the flip.

Also they were written back-to-back, Troopers in 1959, Stranger in 1961. (Both won Hugos.) I think that's important to keep in mind when comparing, like both were the product of essentially the same Heinlein, not different phases or eras.

The movie may be fascist, but the book is significantly different, more nuanced, and better.

I want to read more science fiction, I haven't been able to get into the genre in a while.

Highly recommend Ted Chiang. I assume you've read Ender's Game, but if you haven't I'd recommend it.

The Expanse series is great (even though I didn't like the ending too much, but getiing the good ending is the hardest part, the series itself is great). The movies are not bad either IMHO but the books are so much richer.

Ender's Game and the following trilogy (Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind) I highly recommend. Speaker for the Dead especially.

I enjoyed the Ender's Shadow series as well (though I just read the finally released last book, and it was baddddd), so maybe just stick to the original 3 (Shadow Puppers/of the Hegemon/of the Giant). Not sure those still hold up though, it's been a while.

Hyperion and the sequel are my favorite SF I've read recently - very very good.

Timothy Zahn has a lot of fun stuff if you are into star wars, and some even if you aren't (the conqueror's trilogy, angelmass, icarus hunt)

I have Speaker for the Dead, hoping to read it this year.

I want to get around to some more of the recommendations people made here for graphic novels.

My recommendations. Charles Burns who wrote Black Hole has a new book out last year called Final Cut which, while not quite as good as Black Hole, is still excellent and hits some of the same beats (seventies nostalgia, adolescence, heartache), minus the body horror.

The Good Soldier Svejk

What a coincidence, I was looking to get my hands on a copy of this but I couldn't find it in any of the bookshops I went to.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Another bizarre coincidence, I finished reading it on Monday. Loved it.

My Brilliant Friend

Finished it in December and enjoyed it, although I'm not as eager to read the sequels as you are. My mum lent me the second one.

From Hell Great book. Boy is Alan Moore weird. I keep meaning to look more into the theory behind it.

Did your copy include the annotations with Moore's research at the back? I found these extremely absorbing. My understanding is that Moore doesn't think the Stephen Knight theory really has any factual basis, but it was a cracking yarn.

If you want my copy of Svejk I'll mail it to you anywhere in the continental USA.

I did have the notes at the end of from hell, and read them, but as you said Moore didn't take it all that seriously. I'm sure people have.

I will pay for postage if you ship it to Ireland.

I set a goal of reading 26 books last year, or approximately one every two weeks.

I set myself exactly the same target for this year. Good to know that I have someone's example to follow and motivate mys-

I did not meet that goal.

Oh.

Lol

It wasn't a rigorous goal in metrics, I'm pretty happy with my reading for the year. Obviously reading Tolstoy derailed a title by title goal, as did picking up Plato. If I had gotten a two volume edition of War and Peace, and bound copies of sets of four dialogues, I would have exceeded the goal.

Though that balances out with something like Stepford Wives which is a novella at best, and Yellowface, which I barely read despite it being typeset to make it take twice as many pages as it needed to.

I actually remember reading your one-paragraph review of Yellowface, several times this year I've pointed it out to my girlfriend and said "there's a guy on the Motte who said that book was shite".

I have about five million more things to say about it. My wife got sick of how much I hated this book. Then last week she read it and hated it even more.

Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune

I just happened to have these next to each other on my reading list a few years back, and I think you've right that the two feel very related, and I approve of your comparison.

We don't realize just how important stranger in a strange land was when it came out. Its influence has been laundered through others, but it was massive at the time, hence the Billy Joel shout-out. Charlie Manson was super into it, as were a lot of sixties rock and rollers, and a lot of fiction works that have held up better, like Dune, were written in direct conversation with Stranger.

I found Unbearable Lightness of Being to be pseudo-philosophical trash. Posting my review from goodreads below. Don't think we have anything else in common on our read list from 2024.

I think I would have appreciated this book more if I had visited Prague/Czechia in general, but as it is, my feelings about the book were very mixed. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a book primarily about four people: Tomas, his wife Tereza, his Mistress Sabina, and her lover Franz in the middle years of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, after the attempt revolution in 1968. There isn't really a central plot per se, but most of the book revolves around the conflict between Tomas and Tereza about Tomas's repeated infidelity, and a contrast between the "lightness" with which he seems to live his life and the "heaviness" that she seems to be unable to escape in hers. There's also some classic Kafka-esque living-under-Communism subplots that revolve around an article Tomas publishes in 1968 right before the revolution, but these honestly felt like a distraction from the main aspect of the novel.

For the first 2/3 of the book, this was almost certainly a 1/5 star read. The supposed difference between the lightness of Parmenides and the heaviness in Nietzsche's eternal recurrence seemed like a bunch of pseudo-profound bullshit to me. The supposed lightness of being is just an adolescent refusal to take responsibility for one's own decisions and the life one inhabits. Each of the four title character's also seemed incredibly narcissistic, and the singular focus on sex and desire above all the other things that were going on in Czechia at the time seem to highlight this fact. The detached way in Kundera wrote this didn't help either, the characters really did feel like characters he made up rather than real people, and the plethora of sex scenes bordered on inhuman and frankly disturbing.

There's also the anti-communism. This seems to be something pretty common among Czech authors in particular (perhaps something to do with the Ayn Rand "I'm better than the proles") attitude that they seem to have as an entire country, but there was little acknowledgement about the kinds of things communism did right, and a demonization of Russia as the land of evil-totalitarianism equivalent to Nazi Germany. Kundera couldn't even recognize the happiness and beauty of the socialist May Day celebrations, rather using them as a jumping off point to discuss the concept of Kitsche. The whole thing just reeks of sore loserdom: like we have here in the Old Confederacy. I'm not denying that the Czech communist state (and the Soviets) did horrible things, but we also have to remember who is writing here.

However the last third of the book, after Tomas and Tereza move to the countryside redeemed the book for me quite a bit. We get some wonderful reflections on the role of their dog Karenin in bringing joy to both their lives, and some pro-vegan philosophical musings. We also get to see Tomas and Tereza actually happy. I'm still not quite sure what Kundera's message is: I would likely have to reread this book to figure it out more completely, and I'm pretty sure I don't care to do that, but the beauty of the last part of the book cannot be denied.

This seems to be something pretty common among Czech authors in particular

Weird given how Soviet Communists raped their country in 1968...

but there was little acknowledgement about the kinds of things communism did right

Ah, the good old "Hitler got trains running on time" thing (which he didn't btw)

Kundera couldn't even recognize the happiness and beauty of the socialist May Day celebrations,

Ah yes, and we do not appreciate the brilliant whiteness of KKK hoods and the beauty of Nazi torch marches. Maybe I should rewatch The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of Will to get inspired.

The whole thing just reeks of sore loserdom: like we have here in the Old Confederacy

Like that, except when the Confederacy won and he's the slave. Sore loser indeed.

I'm not denying that the Czech communist state (and the Soviets) did horrible things,

It kinda looks like you do. Or at least you are denying Kundera the right to be horrified and disgusted by those horrible things.

How do you define the term pseudo-philosophical?

An argument/piece of media that tries to make a profound philosophical point, but the point ends up being a tautology, or an unreal distinction of some kind. For example, in this book, I think "lightness" of being is just an excuse to not engage with one's life, not an actual philosophical state.

there was little acknowledgement about the kinds of things communism did right

Ought there to have been?

a demonization of Russia as the land of evil-totalitarianism equivalent to Nazi Germany

Is that characterisation unfair?

Yes. Communism actually provided most people with decent lives and didn't rely on looting the treasuries of other countries to do so.

Communism actually provided most people with decent lives

No. A lot of people managed to live decent lives under communism, but not because of it but despite it. A lot of people - millions of them - did not survive it though, and that was definitely without doubt because of it.

So does capitalism. One difference is that communism in Czechoslovakia came about due to a Soviet supported coup followed by a military invasion 20 years later to crush a popular uprising.

Right, I'm not saying the Czech regime was good or just. I'm just saying the comparisons of the Soviet Union (or even the Czech puppet government) to the Nazis is not a fair comparison. And that's what it felt like Kundera was doing in this book.

I'm just saying the comparisons of the Soviet Union (or even the Czech puppet government) to the Nazis is not a fair comparison

Why not? Both murdered millions of people in service of their ideology which was supposed to make the world better but actually led to absolutely unprecedented horrible suffering and mass deaths. Both dehumanized large groups of people and invented mechanistic means of mass murder. Both started aggressive wars and conquered and subjugated neighboring countries. Both adopted totalitarian ideology that had no place for freedom of thought or discussion. I think there's a lot of fair comparison there. And yes, both had joyous parades on special occasion (try not to go there or not be joyous, and you'll find out what happens to you). Strangely, most people do not appreciate that joy too much.

The death toll in the Holodomor was in the same ballpark (i.e. seven figures) to the death toll in the Holocaust. Compare how many political prisoners were imprisoned in concentration camps vs. gulags (over a million people died in the latter). As expected in dictatorships of all kinds there was the usual suppression of the free press, assassination of political opponents, military expansionism and so on.

Comparisons between X and Nazi Germany are a dime a dozen, but I think that the comparison is much more warranted in the case of the Soviet Union than in most cases it's trotted out.

I feel like a few citations are needed.

I have paused all reading since I want to get through my Tantra Illuminated courses on the Near Enemies of Truth. This is based on a book of the same name released last year by the guy behind Tantra Illuminated, Christopher Hareesh Wallis where he points out common mistakes many make on their spiritual journey. This book is also a supplementary text in the course. His other book many read and liked was titled Tantra Illuminated. My other course is the history of yoga which has Tantra Illuminated as supplementary reading.

Here are some I recommend

  • Ramayana by Goldman.

Ramayana but in a more litrary form as opposed to a poem form, Goldman is a very capable sanskrit scholar and Lord Rams story is one that defines the high civilization my place once was with Lord Ram being a physical embodiment of everything holy and Aryan. The story like any epic is simple, you learn about the mortal struggles of literally god where he is unaware of his own divine self and foregoes everything good in life to do whats right.

  • The Watchmen (good graphic novel)

Classi graphic novel every hispter recommends for good reason. DC also released an animated movie on it besides a live action movie by zack snyder nearly 15 years ago, a very skeptical take on the age old superhero trope, it is a very highly rated work.

  • Art of the personal essay by Phillipe Lopate

A very broad but light collection of essays from ancient to modern times on a variety of different topics. Very well Curated, my copy of it was "borrowed" by my cousin sister so I need to order it again to read all of the essays but the ones I did read were fantastic.

  • The Tyler Digest

The good parts are really funny, insightful and personal. Owen Cook, a super smart philosophy student from canada was mysterys student who was short, ugly, ginger and balding, the book presents a collection of his classic internet posts detailing his journey from a guy who did not get laid in 2 years of tryng to a guy who then later lives up to his moniker of Tyler Durden inspired by fight club. Tyler was the most important PUA of all time where in he breaks down in fine detail what made cold approach tick and his own struggles around it. It is more about his journey and the world around him than pickup tactics, a raw unfiltered look at Owen Cook in his finest hour before RSD blew up.

The Tyler Digest is also why I detail out my life here. The book is simply a loose collection of various posts Owen made in chronological order compiled by another guy. He starts off as this spergy loser who by the en is a different man, calm, relaxed, competent yet still deeply aware of what plagues guys like me and him. I want something like this too so that by the end of 4-5 years, I can look back at what I was and how I saw life, things I did and the insights I earned from them. 4 years ago for instance, same date, I posted about my oneitis on one of these wellness wednesday threads and how over the moon I was because she threw me a bone vs now as someone who is somewhat ok at cold approaching girls and does not attach his self-worth to what some girl online thinks of himself. Funnily enough, I got introduced to all this on themotte so it all ties up in the end.

Day of the Oprichnik I hated this book and didn’t get it, but I think it’s because I’m not Russian and I don’t find gross-out gore or porn interesting.

It's one of these pomo books that expect you to be familiar with the source material, like Fowles, Eco, contemporary art or jazz. The source material in question being primarily Russia's homegrown brand of Dark Enlightenment wankery from the aughties.

I disagree, the only thing that it requires from you is that you are Russian and lived in Russia. It’s actually funny how every review for it that I’ve heard from non-Russians is negative, but Russians love it. In general, I’m a bit baffled that foreigners try to read Sorokin because it’s akin to trying to understand an inside joke without any context.

Cool post, thanks for writing it. Should I read Shogun? It's been recommended to me a thousand times for obvious reasons, but I'm a jerk about historical accuracy and I'm worried it's going to be full of anachronistic nonsense or magical oriental Mr. Miyagi characters. Maybe I'm approaching the book too seriously and should suspend disbelief?

For 2025, I want to read some self-help books, strange as that may sound, to get some of the books that are always being recommended.

FWIW, I'm reading King Warrior Magician Lover by Moore & Gillette, and it gets recommended fairly often in some manosphere corners. I'm only about halfway through and I'm not sure I'm totally sold on (what appears to me to be) all the Jungian psychobabble, but it's kind of interesting and different, and I could see how the framework might be useful for men. That might be one to check out.

Tim Ferriss gets recommended a lot. I read the Four Hour Work Week back in college, but it didn't leave a huge impression on me. All I remember is that he became a "kickboxing world champion" in some weight class by somehow exploiting a loophole in the rules and... that proved some point about hustling, or something. But a lot of people seem to like his stuff.

Should I read Shogun?

Yes. I re-read sections of it along with a friend while re-watching the show. It holds up better than I remember, I might re-read it in full. There are parts that might not hold up perfectly, and you can do nit-picky historical accuracy stuff (technically Geishas didn't exist at that exact time, stuff like that), but if you view it primarily from the perspective of Blackthorne (largely as a stand-in for Clavell himself, who was a prisoner of the Japanese in Singapore during WWII) I think it holds up really well. It's very GRRM when it comes to throneroom politics, very Ian Fleming when it comes to swashbuckling omni-competent British hero everyone wants to fuck.

Reading it again in parts, I realized how much the book is a metaphor for the aftermath of WWII. It starts with the Japanese doing unforgivable things to Blackthorne and his men, and asks how can he forgive them? This mirrors the journey of Japan in the second half of the twentieth century: how can Clavell forgive the Japanese for what they did to him, how can the Japanese forgive the Americans for the bombings? Clavell suggests it is possible for people so totally opposed to find human connection, understanding, and love; even if the book is far from utopian in its vision.

Okay, that sounds pretty cool. I like the idea of taking as the narrative of a British man rather than that of an omniscient narrator. I'll pull it off my shelf and give it a read.

My problem with the praise of the (remade) miniseries is how the ostensible protagonist of Shogun (Blackthorne) is relegated to an ineffectual buffoon, without any real redeeming qualities apart from the fact that Toranaga and Mariko seemingly take to him. I enjoyed the book immensely both times I read it. I am somewhat surprised by your praise of Ta Nehini Coates, who I think is a muddled-thinking fraud.. That said, I haven't read this book you're recommending.

Cool post, thanks for writing it. Should I read Shogun? It's been recommended to me a thousand times for obvious reasons, but I'm a jerk about historical accuracy and I'm worried it's going to be full of anachronistic nonsense or magical oriental Mr. Miyagi characters. Maybe I'm approaching the book too seriously and should suspend disbelief?

Read his Jardine Matheson books instead, they have much less weebery.

Do they get better after TaiPan? I read it a while back and just felt like it went nowhere, where Shogun was perfectly well contained as a story.

What I disliked about Shogun was the whole fake protagonist thing, like in Unsong. Both HK novels suffer a lot from "things resolve themselves", but at least the hero of the story is the hero of the story.

Did you have the impression Blackthorne wasn't the hero of Shogun? (I mean the book.) He definitely was in the Chamberlain series, definitely wasn't in the new series, but I remember in the book, despite the omniscient perspective getting into every character's head, Blackthorne did seem to be the main character we are meant to empathize with.

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