The Brave Learner by Julie Bogart

The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life by Julie Bogart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It had some good ideas and some good frames for thinking about motivating kids. But it felt a bit fluffy and a little disorganized/repetitive. I preferred some of the parenting advice over the actual homeschool advice though I was reading it to learn more about homeschooling (through Covid).

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The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits

The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite by Daniel Markovits
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Interesting perspective. I would recommend reading "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World" by Anand Giridharadas first because it's a related threat to democracy and, in my opinion, a better book. But this has a lot of value as well if you have the time to read it. Spoiler alert: you might not have time to read it if you're in the group of elite currently being devoured by over-work.

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Reviving Ophelia 25th Anniversary Edition by Mary Pipher

Reviving Ophelia 25th Anniversary Edition: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read the 2019 anniversary edition and I imagine it's a lot better than the original because it could compare and contrast the problems of young girls in different decades: the 1990s (when I was a teen) and the early 2000s. Though I thought the book was interesting, it was made up predominantly of personal stories and seemed to lack more rigorous science. For example, I never understood precisely what about the culture made girls in the 1990s such a mess that somehow lost its influence in the early 2000s.

Occasionally, the author writes something that makes her seem like a space alien that didn't have anyone proofread the book like for example when she suggested you should never have more than two drinks in a day. Parties?

I thought chapter 13 had some of the most useful information in terms of sparking conversation with children about sexual activity. I also enjoyed the heavy Nebraska focus.

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When by Daniel H. Pink

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A short book about how timing affects both our personal decisions and business plans. There is definitely some repeat information that most people are aware of already, but the book is so short that it's worth reading to get a sense of the overall psychological impact of timing decisions correctly.

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Educated by Tara Westover

Educated by Tara Westover
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I heard about this book and I wasn't initially excited to read it. I figured that I had already read The Glass Castle, Hillbilly Elegy, even Etched in Sand. I picked it up anyway, and I was fascinated by every single chapter.

Part of what's remarkable about this book is that even though Westover's upbringing was extreme, I can see analogous threads in various religions and in current political movements. I particularly enjoyed how she took us on the educational journey with her- her first times learning about slavery, the Holocaust, the civil rights movement, and feminism. I wish more ordinary people would "come out of the hills" on these subjects.

So many people are eager to discount the veracity of Westover's account in part because her transformation seems so extreme. (Other people discount her story because the life she describes in Idaho seems mundane and normal to them! Some people even make both somewhat contradictory points!) She credits many people for helping her achieve a remarkable education: her brother Tyler, her friends at BYU, a Bishop at BYU, a professor a Cambridge. Moreover, the world is, and always has been, filled with remarkable people. There is no more extreme story of transformation than that of Frederick Douglass or such remarkable thinkers as Benjamin Franklin. Why then are people so eager to discount Westover's accomplishments and life story?

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Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I learned the same thing from one chapter in NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children. The message is important but this book just belabors that one point that our abilities are not fixed based on inborn talent, but must be cultivated through hard work and determination.

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The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse

The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance by Ben Sasse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ben Sasse is a Republican United States Senator from Nebraska since 2015. At first, I thought this was going to be a really interesting read. Throughout the book, I felt myself agreeing with many of the individual sentences that Sasse wrote. He's highly intelligent so these sentences certainly sound good and are true... in a way. For example, I agree with his advice for middle-class young people to expand your view of the world by traveling and reading classics. Though, I think the latter is more important and financially obtainable for most of the population. Note that our current President is very well-traveled but very poorly read and the result is less than ideal. Also, note that this is not a millennial issue but an American-of-all-ages issue.

The problem is that many of Sasse's ideas are actually in contradiction with each other, and more importantly, in contradiction with how he votes in the Senate. He doesn't make an overall argument which is clear or compelling.

For example, Sasse states: “I'm a conservative but not because I care very much about the marginal tax rates of the richest Americans, rather I'm a market-oriented localist because I believe in cultural pluralism and I believe in the First Amendment, in voluntarism over compulsion whenever possible, and in as much decentralized decision-making as is conceivably feasible.” There's a lot in this run-on sentence to unpack. First of all, I'm a liberal and I would say that I think capitalism is better than the alternatives (with regulation), and I believe in cultural pluralism and "I believe in the First Amendment, in voluntarism over compulsion whenever possible, and in as much de-centralized decision-making as is conceivably feasible.” I agree with many of these ideas, in whole or in part, so I don't particularly understand why this set of values makes him conservative.

Let's break it down a little more. He says, "... I believe in cultural pluralism..." what he's really nodding to is state's rights, not "cultural pluralism,” because in Chapter 5 he makes it pretty clear that the only culture he believes in is the historical Puritan work-driven culture. What makes this ethic superior to say, the European ethic of working to survive, but having ample vacation, family, and sick leave. He leaves this unexplained.

Yes, no one likes the entitled younguns' who demand praise and high salaries without earning it and leave work early and write obnoxious emails to superiors. But can we take a minute to discuss the CEOs and bankers who get paid millions even when they fail astronomically, bankrupt their companies, and lose the savings of investors? Can we compare these relative evils?

So let's talk more about the millennials who are having trouble in the current economy and compare them to Sasse's grandma who was an exceptional human being that strapped her baby to a plow” and just dealt with all of life's troubles. Can we just embrace that she's a superior person, and not hold everyone else to her standard? Did everyone else behave like her during the Great Depression and just rise to the challenge? No. Suicide rates averaged 12.1 per 100,000 people in the decade prior to the Depression, jumped to 18.9 the year of Wall Street's crash and remained higher than normal throughout the the Great Depression. (from Historical Statistics of the United States: Bicentennial Edition, Colonial Times to 1970, Vol. 1 (Washington DC: 1975), via https://www.shmoop.com/great-depressi....) So maybe we should celebrate that these millennials are surviving at all, especially when so many of them are getting shot at by automatic weapons of war, and worry less about how much they're spending on iPhones- arguably just doing their part for King Capitalism. (Full disclosure: I paid $35 for my iPhone. I do not regard it as a necessity.)

I agree with Sasse's anti-consumerism, see Chapter 6. Oh boy, do I! The problem is, I don't think he believes these things as they appear to be in contradiction with his voting record. Also, he states he's "market-oriented." It's as if Sasse doesn't understand how conservative deregulation capitalism works or what drives it. It's extremely confusing and he doesn't sound like a conservative at all in this chapter. NOT AT ALL. But we know how he's voting for big corporations in the Senate right? We know he's just feeding us a bunch of nice-sounding sentences right? He just voted "yes" to rolling back some bank regulations put in place by the Dodd-Frank Act (67-31).

Okay, maybe you're thinking that's because he's for "as much de-centralized decision-making as is conceivably feasible.” Um, except, he just voted "Yes," to banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. As anyone who has read about these abortions knows, these abortions are extremely difficult to obtain and expensive- often requiring upfront payments that may not be reimbursed by insurance- and as such almost always involve a problem that developed later in pregnancy and risk the life of the mother.

So to be clear, banks should not be well-regulated by the federal government even though they have the power to destroy the entire economy. But the potential life-and-death medical care of an individual pregnant woman should be regulated by the federal government. Personally, I don't think he makes a lot of sincere, persuasive, nuanced, or -let's just say it- "adult" arguments.

See his voting record here:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...
https://ballotpedia.org/Ben_Sasse

P.S. I'm moving to Nebraska this summer.

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Apology by Plato

Apology by Plato
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Interesting, moving, my favorite dialogue so far. Though we've all heard "the unexamined life is not worth living" I particularly enjoyed the full quote (depending on your translation this may vary obviously):

"And if I say again that the greatest good of man is to converse daily about virtue and all that which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, that you are still less likely to believe. And yet what I say is true, although a thing of which it hard for me to persuade you."

This quote is a great precursor to Jesus:
“The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.”


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Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a beautiful, heart-breaking, and mostly joyful book. I will definitely reread this book for years to come. It starts off a bit silly because Anne is just 11 at the beginning of the book, but by the time it ends she's 16, and the pages can barely contain her amazing soul.

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Meno by Plato

Meno by Plato
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This dialogue is Socrates's attempt to make the handsome Meno tell him what every instance of virtue has and only virtue has. Meno is a little slow and talks about "getting good things" rather than any soulful or golden-rule type answers.

Shortly thereafter, Meno tries to give up. So Socrates teaches a slave boy some geometry to prove that people are better off realizing all that they don't know rather than thinking they do know and being incorrect.

Then Socrates launches into some strange religious ideas he doesn't substantiate or explain in any convincing way. He ties reason and use of logic to "anamnesis" or recollection of a past life's knowledge.

Anytus comes by and makes death threats to Socrates.

Then is my favorite quote because it is the only part that makes sense to me:
"... none of us remarked that right and good action is possible to man under other guidance than that of knowledge (episteme);-and indeed if this be denied, there is no seeing how there can be any good men at all. "

But then Socrates goes on to say "right opinion" is just as good as knowledge. Seems dubious to me, since "right opinion" would likely still have a basis in knowledge of the things opined about or similar. Although, further research tells me that this might just be a bad translation, and Socrates is actually saying that a logical working out of a solution (via the Socratic method) is as good as knowledge.

Then finally Socrates concludes that since goodness isn't something we are born with, nor something we can learn, it must come from the gods. My online research tells me scholars disagree about whether he is being serious or sarcastically dismissing Meno because he can't be taught anything.

He certainly seems serious in the dialogue but he can't be because he's endeavoring to do the very thing he claims is impossible to do? Though, irony on top of irony, I don't know how effective Socrates has been in this dialogue. At least, I don't feel any smarter after reading this.


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The Republic by Plato

The Republic by Plato
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am reading Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World and pausing to read any of the books mentioned that I have not already read. In this case, I had read most of The Republic before but couldn't remember it so I went back and read the whole thing.

Great Books didn't give me a lot of help in analyzing or dealing with The Republic so I listened to a library audiobook course about The Republic. This definitely helped in understanding all the confusing arguments Socrates makes.

Plato describes Socrates engaging in a dialogue with Glaucon and numerous other Athenians and non-citizens about a number of topics. The first part is about justice and it mostly matches up to a modern (even Christian) conception of justice. Justice is not about the force of the powerful. It's about the soul, goodness towards even enemies, and the rights of weak.

The next part is about the perfect society, but not really, because Plato didn't believe in a modern-day Western conception of legal equality based on human rights. To his credit, his perfect society is feminist- women can do whatever men can do except things requiring a lot of physical strength. Unfortunately, his society is also based on eugenics, hierarchy with little opportunity for social movement, communist, and without families. To modern ears his perfect society sounds like the perfect Young Adult Dystopian Novel; a cross between The Giver and Allegiant. According to my audiobook course, this Socrates's conception of the perfect society is the direct result of Athen's recent defeat to Sparta. Many of the aspects are either taken from Spartan society or a "correction" of something in Athenian society that Socrates perceives to be at fault for Athen's loss.

Socrates also wanted philosopher kings. As such, the book is also about Socrates's conception of making philosophy a fixed study in the way that math and geometry have fixed answers. Which is certainly an interesting concept. Philosophy (at least popular philosophy) has moved so far away from that idea that the idea of real answers in ethics and philosophy is very appealing.

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The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Even though this is totally out of date with Facebook, it was still really interesting. It makes you wonder if Gladwell's theory fits with how the Russian ads for Trump were implemented. They were mostly used in the relevant electoral vote swing areas, so they were tailored in a way not described in the book. The "connector" was not a person but the Facebook and Twitter ad technology itself, which according to the book is not supposed to work especially well- especially considering that we are overwhelmed by Facebook and Twitter information. They were definitely "sticky"- racism often is.

Anyway, the book could definitely use an update in the post-social media world. Is everything different now? Or is social media really just like email? I'm thinking everything is different now.

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I reread this as part of my "Bannon-Trump-resist" reading list. I only read it before it in middle school and I'm not sure what I got from it at the time except maybe that tyranny, and tyranny of ideas, is dangerous.

It has a peculiar effect on me this time around. I've been reading fast and furiously for about a year, trying to make up for lost time (all the time I spent not reading very much while I was working a lot). The more I read, the more I become aware of all the books that are necessary to read; the books I have yet to read. And in this frame of mind, the single scariest sentence in the book is: "Remember the firemen are rarely necessary. The public stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but it's a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line."

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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ever want to experience the mental illness/breakdown of a philosopher? Also need a few motorcycle maintenance tips? This is the book for you. Some talk about mindfulness and zen as well but not the main topic in my opinion.

Spoiler alert. My hard copy is an original copy. My digital loan from the library had a 10-year anniversary edition Afterword that totally devastated me.

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Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In many ways this book is more interesting than The Black Swan, and I agree with a lot of what Taleb writes about in the book. I especially enjoyed and agreed with his thoughts on diet. (Really!) But there are also more things in this book that can be picked apart, either because he is wrong or flippantly unclear about them. Maybe that just makes the book more interesting to discuss in a book club or seminar.

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Etched in Sand by Regina Calcaterra

Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island by Regina Calcaterra
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The beginning of this was particularly good and I think it could have been a better memoir with tighter editing. Part of the issue is the main story of her abuse and overcoming the abuse to build a good life is over way before the memoir is over. It could have ended with her first job, quickly summarized her adult life- possibly with a focus on her role as a leader in Long Island.

I was particularly confused about the lengthy section about her paternity test suit, even though as an attorney myself I understood what she explained about the case itself. I understand why the lawsuit may be important to her, but that's different than what's likely to be important to a reader. In any case, I think she sounds like a remarkable person who views her past in a self-aware and rational manner.

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The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is my first Virginia Woolf novel, and it's remarkable for so many reasons. It's very well-written, and it's interesting and thoughtful throughout. Woolf introduces a great number of characters but lets you know three of the characters intimately from both each other's and the Greek choir's perspective. It's a remarkable work of art, though at the end I felt a little used so that Woolf could demonstrate her perspective on the world.

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A new favorite. An amazingly well-written memoir that brings the history of America to life. This should be required reading for every American high school student (preferably September of their freshman year) for how it elucidates the importance of education, human rights, and history. In this work, Douglass is also a powerful and moving religious leader that abides no hypocrisy.

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In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria

In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love Zakaria's books. This was no exception. I'd like everyone- especially everyone not on Goodreads- to read this book. I only gave it 4 stars and not 5 stars because I didn't think all the chapters were really on point, and there wasn't a lot of information that was new to me. Nonetheless, the entire book was interesting and because I agree wholeheartedly with all of Zakaria's points, I found myself thinking over and over again yes! this! yes!

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Grit by Angela Duckworth

Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success by Angela Duckworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Understanding this author's points requires some subtlety of thought that, reading some of the reviews, some people seem to miss. Duckworth defines grit numerous ways but it's basically an ability to do difficult things and to try again after failing. Grit is a very important factor in both success and happiness. Grit can be learned and practiced.

What this book does not say is that everyone has equal access to grit. She specifically says that in studies of mice that were shocked without any control over their own suffering could not function as well in other tasks as mice that had some control over their suffering. The mice became victims of learned helplessness. The problem here is that unlike the sections about grittiness, there were no real life examples of human beings suffering these conditions (though arguably there was an example of one person overcoming this condition with a lot of help from other people). There is some discussion of income inequality, particularly with regards to a lack of extra-curricular programs that teach grit in poor schools, but there wasn't any kind of exploration of institutionalized racism, sexism, and poverty- oftentimes working in conjunction to "shock" human beings repeatedly through years and decades of their life without any control over these shocks.

Obviously, this isn't Duckworth's area of expertise, and she only cites the mice studies to add fullness to her exploration of grit. The reason for concern though is that her grit philosophy is very closely adjacent to the pull-yourself-up-by bootstrap mentality that excuses the persistence of income inequality, racism, and sexism because these are "not the most important reasons" for the failure of particular people or societies to thrive.

Other people doubt Duckworth's arguments because they perceive talent to be of crucial importance in success in various physical and creative fields. I find this line of thinking to be less interesting or important because it's difficult to know how much hard work (and "grit") others have invested in particular endeavors. With the exception of certain child prodigies, age isn't a good proxy for hours of focused growth practice. (And there are plenty of child prodigies that don't accomplish anything beyond what average adults later accomplish.) Except in physical endeavors where a particular body type is necessary, I do tend to believe that the highest levels of "talent" can be learned. But for that talent to be learned your main focus in life probably needs to be that one thing, and you need other people support your single-minded focus, oftentimes by literally monetarily supporting you. (Or loaning you money, or paying you at such a high rate that you can take a long leave from paying work, and sometimes by your spouse doing all the housework.)

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