The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks

The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The writing was not good, but it's full of interesting ideas and I think it might make a great movie.

I enjoyed the exploration of dataism versus living off the grid. And I'm always a fan of anticonsumerism. The author introduced me to some interesting ideas about quantum computers.

I wasn't into the fantasy element of the travelers. I didn't see the benefit of it or the tie into the other concepts.

View all my reviews

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fascinating and intricate. Harari builds a spiderweb, starting with the history of human thought, building and building until you understand how plausible his predictions of the future are.

This was the first time I had encountered this particular explanation of why we should study history- not just to avoid repeating it, but to understand that the actions that we take as a given are actually options. (See his section on lawns.)

This was the first time I had considered humanism in the particular way he explains it, and the first I even heard of dataism. Strongly recommend this book for its intellectual content, but it's worth mentioning that it was also so fun to read that I could not stop.

If you want the super short summary, Harari wrote this article for the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/50bb4830-6...

View all my reviews

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While there are many great concepts in this book, for me it suffered from the following:

1) A lot of this research- even Kahneman's personal research - has been widely cited in more recent books which I read first.
2) Some of it is an explanation of basics statistics such as regression to the mean. While most of the population might not be familiar with basic stats, if you are, this part might be a bit belabored. (And for people that aren't familiar with basic stats, this book might be basically unreadable because I'm not convinced that the author did a good job of explaining it.)
3) It was too long. It covered too many "biases" and there were too many many examples of each kind of bias. I almost gave up on the book because I was going insane from the length and repetition.

View all my reviews

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."

View all my reviews

March: Book Two by John Lewis

March: Book Two by John Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Better than March 1. It's an extremely powerful account of the Freedom Rides and goes all the way to the March on Washington. It works well as a stand-alone book. It should definitely be required reading in American History classes.

View all my reviews

My Escape from Slavery by Frederick Douglass

My Escape from Slavery by Frederick Douglass
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a follow-up to Douglass's autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and fills in the missing information about how he escaped from slavery.

Frederick Douglass is one of the best writers of all time. His subject matter is captivating, but his skill as a writer is both technically perfect and extremely moving.

Some favorite sentences:
"This contest was now ended; my chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy."
"I was without home, without acquaintance, without money, without credit, without work, and without any definite knowledge as to what course to take, or where to look for succor."

And this! I love this: "While in this situation I had little time for mental improvement. Hard work, night and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like water, was more favorable to action than thought; yet here I often nailed a newspaper to the post near my bellows, and read while I was performing the up and down motion of the heavy beam by which the bellows was inflated and discharged."

Available free here: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/doug...

View all my reviews

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, I have a lot of thoughts and I'm going to let them settle for a long time. I cried a few times here. Saunders captured personal grief as well as it can be captured.

I didn't find it as difficult to follow as some reviewers said but it did take a while to get the hang of the structure.

At the same time, this novel was deeply weird. This is what you might expect to happen if Tim Burton and Claudia Rankine did a production of Our Town.

View all my reviews

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.

View all my reviews

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Some good writing, some bad writing, but too much sympathy for the murderer and not enough for the victim in my opinion.

View all my reviews

Salome by Oscar Wilde

Salome by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was a disturbing reimagining of the Bible story. It was fine.

View all my reviews