Reviews

Heard this book referenced in a podcast as one of the best historical novels ever. I’m not sure I would go that far, but it was a very entertaining read. The writing and setting were beautiful. It follows the last in a long line of Sicilian nobility while Sicily and Italy as a whole is experiencing revolution and political turmoil during the unification of Italy that was happening ~1870s. This novel further cemented my views on the inevitability of history and the material blow to culture from the extinction of the noble class. Any remnants of the nobility left today are mere SIMULACRA of the originals.

Summary The Master and his Emissary written by Iain “Right brain so hott right now” McGilchrist is the product of twenty years of research into hemispheric differences in the human brain. He starts out by dismantling the pop psychology version of the hemispheric differences saying that the simple male(left)/ female(right) dichotomy is incorrect because the right is actually good at logic too so now, we can’t find a female part of the brain anywhere. To put the book in a single sentence it would be that the left sees parts while the right sees the whole. Part of the impetus of this book seems to be that the right hemisphere has been neglected by research and considered of lesser importance than the left (which does the talking) according to McGilchrist this is flipped. The “master” in his title is in reference to the right hemisphere and the emissary to the left. His claim is that thought originates in the RH and is sent to the LH but must importantly return to the RH to find its grounding in lived experience. He makes some really broad claims that are bound to ruffle a few feathers. Shots are fired at many folks, like Descartes, everyone’s favorite punching bag, Plato who we are assuming you understand if you are disagreeing with him, and Chomsky the misguided genius of the left. This book is full of interesting anecdotes about the functions of the brain, here are a few that stood out. The LH and RH seem to work in a sort of opponent processing. Where if one side loses some power, the other side will step in to fill the gap. This usually causes undesirable outcomes for example in stroke patients or the like. He claims the singing (RH biased) preceded language (LH biased) due to its simplicity and the way our brains pick up rhythm and some studies that showed that babies tend to pick up words lyrically prior to syntax. [Chomsky shakes his fist in feudal rage] The corpus callosum is the major connector between the LH and RH. This is what was severed in patients with severe epilepsy because it appeared to ease the symptoms creating what we call “split brain” patients. Two things are interesting here, first that for the most part the patients were able to live normal lives after the operation. Secondly, that bridge appears not only as a connector, but a borderline that held the hemispheres at bay. So, after the operation the instances of strange behavior like the left hand reaching for a coat (controlled by the RH) and the right hand (controlled by the LH) reaching out to stop it are caused by this imbalance in opponent processing. One of his major claims in the book is that the western world has become a machine world, the LH preferred way of looking at the world. We moved away from the dynamic world of the RH which is full of curves, circles, and flow into the static world of the left, line segments, n-gons, and timesteps. From art to the written word itself, the world has shifted towards an LH biased mode of operation. Language used to be written vertically and made with pictograms (like hieroglyphs) which meant reading favored the RH, we now use abstracted symbols and read left to right which is exactly the way LH prefers it. The shift to favor the LH has torn us out of an experiential world and placed us into a mechanistic world where we are observers. He makes the case that this perspective is very similar to cases of schizophrenia, which are primarily a malady wherein the LH is overactive. He ends the book by looking at the ways in which this LH bias is not as apparent in eastern cultures and that perhaps this signals a way forward for us. ...

Written by Mikhail Bulgakov(Ukrainian) in the USSR during Stalin’s reign the book was censored and only published in full posthumously. The book is now widely considered to be one of the best novels of the 20th century and with good reason. The novel opens with a conversation between a literary editor and a poet. The editor had just commissioned the poet to write a satirical poem belittling Jesus and was upset with the poet’s creation. According to the editor, the poet’s approach was all wrong because he admitted that Jesus existed in the first place and was not a completely mythological creation. With great erudition he points out the similarity between different mystery religions and Christianity, and also the parallels between the dying and rising gods category of mythology. While the poet listens deeply impressed by these new facts a mysterious tall stranger sits on a bench next to them. Overhearing their conversation, he breaks in asking what they were talking about. The stranger then relates a captivating account of the conversation between Pontius Pilate and Jesus. He then predicts that the literary editor will be beheaded…. I will say no more of the plot as I would highly recommend this book makes its way onto your read list. The writing is superb, the story is engrossing, sags a little in the middle but picks up again at the end. I also guarantee whatever ideas about the plot you have, given the introduction I gave are pleasantly mistaken. Say what you will about Stalin and the rough Russian climate, but the images of hope, forgiveness, and love that the area produced seem to be unparalleled.

Synopsis Published in 1942 Camus began writing this book as France (his home country) was collapsing under the pressure of the German advance. Let’s just say it was probably a pretty dark time to be a Frenchmen. This book starts off by Camus asking what he considers to be the most important question in philosophy. Which is: does the realization that life is meaningless and absurd necessarily require suicide? He then begins by defining exactly what he means by absurd. According to Camus the absurd emerges when man’s passionate and ceaseless desire for an answer from the universe is, and forever will be met by silence. He asserts that many philosophers have started from this realization but have in the end taken a leap to get around or alleviate the discomfort of this conclusion. Either by turning to a God or elevating reason until it essentially serves the function of God. He labels this leap “philosophical suicide”. He says that suicide in general is admission that either life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. The same could be said of this philosophical leap. His approach is rooted in acceptance of the absurd without hope, but a perpetual revolt in spite of this fact. He uses the story of Sisyphus (the guy who is cursed to roll a rock up a hill only to see it roll back down again) as a guide to how to live in this absurd world. He says, “there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” This is the attitude of revolt that the absurd hero must adopt. To at once be fully conscious of the meaninglessness of your life while at the same time transcending this conclusion by acceptance. As the famous quote from this essay states “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”. The point is that you can choose to find freedom in a universe that does not have a predefined path. ...

This book was complete trash. This wins the worst book I’ve read since I can remember. There weren’t any redeeming factors in this book. The author was a strong proponent of the “Jesus went to India” theory, which is literally based on one book by some random Russian dude who may or may not have gotten rich from the story. No modern-day scholars put any merit in this theory. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong necessarily, but it does mean you can get a show on the History channel if you believe in it. For some unknown reason the author tried to write the story in a sort of prose, which if you ever have heard spoken world then you know exactly the style this book was written in. The author’s views were an infusion of eastern mysticism with Marxist overtones. This by itself is great, but why not write in a normal format. Also why try to foist your views onto a 1st century Palestinian? This book would have been more convincing and enjoyable had it been written like a normal book instead of in Goodwill prose, also if he could have cited sources, for further research that would have been much appreciated.

Julian Barnes wrote my favorite book of 2020 (The History of the World in 10 and 1/2 Chapters) so I was looking forward to reading a newer book from him. This one was published in 2016 and is not quite a historical fiction and not a true autobiography but more like a story that follows the life of a Russian composer (Dmitri Shostakovich) under Stalin shortly after WWII. Barnes then fills in some missing pieces, drawing out a psychological portrait of a neurotic and somewhat spineless composer under the iron fist of the USSR. All in all, this book had some really good moments but came nowhere near the mastery (IMO) of what I was expecting from Barnes. Where Solzhenitsyn approaches the USSR regime as a prisoner in a gulag this is from the perspective of Russia’s most popular composer who was also in constant fear of the gulag. This helps to paint a picture of what life was like to those who were “lucky” enough to be outside the gulag. I really like Barnes’ writing style, but I would not put this is on a must-read list.

Summary This book (as the title implies) is interested in the emergence of species, and now that we are talking about it, what are species to begin with? At the time, there were many very experienced naturalists who would disagree on whether a certain plant or animal belonged in species A as a variety or actually should be considered a distinct species. These disagreements arose due to the fact that no one had a clear theory as to how these differences arose and up to then we used internal and external structure to define species. If these structures diverged enough, we would separate them into species. They also used the concept of whether entity A could potentially breed with entity B. If not, then the two entities must not be in the same species. There were other methods used, but these two should suffice to show how difficulties in definition might arise. For example, the internal and external structure of sexed organisms may very greatly as in humans, but we obviously must be the same species, right?….. Actually, that might explain some things. As for mating, this brings its own difficulties (I’m on a roll), but strictly speaking, you can have two different species reproduce, like a grizzly bear and polar bear, and this happens quite often in the plant kingdom. On the other hand, you have many instances of creatures in the same species category that can’t reproduce inside their own species. Think Mastiff and Chihuahua. So these principles are by no means black and white. The prevalent view at the time was the belief that each species was created individually, with this view the categorization of species should be much more straight-forward than it is, but Darwin had other ideas. Using pigeons, due to their availability and the long history they have of human selection, he built an argument. He stated that if we had found the various varieties of pigeons in the wild, we would without a doubt classify them as different species. We only refrain from doing so because we happen to know in this case that all the varieties descended from rock pigeons. What if this same concept applied to the whole animal kingdom? What if instead of individually created species there was a single progenitor which has given rise to the magnificent variety we observe today? How far might these accumulated minute changes take us? ...

I try to review every book I read or listen to, but I have a hard time with these types of books because they are summary style. How would you rate a Wikipedia article? You may be able to, but odds are the rating would have more to do with the facticity of the article versus its writing. I have no knowledge on the topic, so I cannot review that aspect. What I can say is that this did a decent job introducing the Ottomans to a Western reader, although you would do well to get a mental picture of Eastern Europe and Western Asia as there are so many places mentioned. Your eyes will probably glaze over unless you can picture their locations in your head. The reader for this audiobook was not fantastic. I will definitely want to dig more into the Ottomans, but probably after getting a better picture of early European history.

Summary This book follows nine main characters whose lives are deeply impacted by trees in one way or another. The story unfolds in four parts that mirror the sections of a tree: roots, trunk, crown, and seeds. Thoughts Writing a review for this book leaves me conflicted. The ‘Roots’ section sets the stage for the rest of the novel, yet I find myself wishing the book had concluded there. With its numerous main characters, the narrative functions almost as an anthology of stories about individuals, and often, several generations of their ancestors. This part of the book is outstanding—moving, thought-provoking, and, I believe, achieves what Powers intended: to view lives through the perspective of trees, or in “tree time”. You are presented with a series of images, events, tragedies, and triumphs, all the while knowing that these would be encapsulated within several inches of growth in a tree’s trunk. The subsequent sections strive to intertwine these characters in various ways as they seek to elevate awareness of industrialization’s impact on the planet. Although convincing, these sections lose the originality of the first, often veering into more predictable plot lines reminiscent of a classic Greenpeace-type narrative, akin to “Avatar”. Here, you have industrialists looking to exploit the planet’s natural resources and protagonists fighting to thwart this exploitation. In conclusion, I highly recommend the first section, and if you’re like me, you’ll complete the book out of a sense of obligation. You won’t consider it time wasted, but it won’t be a transcendent experience either. Reading this book will change the way you look at trees.

The Perennial Philosophy was Aldous Huxley’s attempt to unify the major world religions. The premise of the book is that they are all talking about the same thing and the differences are illusory. He relies heavily on mystics from some of the main traditions (Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Zen). It is clear that Huxley has done an immense amount of research into all these traditions and is able to pull out some fascinating quotes from each. Here are some interesting thoughts: ...