Category: books

  • Historical vs scientific facts

    Slowly making my way through Ernst Cassier’s “An Essay on Man” and ran across this gem which seems particularly useful in our attempts to recover from fake news.

  • Book notes: The Hidden Wound

    I picked up 6-7 books (and a couple pounds of coffee) from my favorite local bookstore in the height of quarantine to help support them while everything was closed.  Three of them were for me: Hillbilly Elegy, Appalacian Reckoning (notes on those two coming later) and The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry.  I have (and…

  • Book Notes: Station Eleven

    Yes, I read a book about a pandemic during a pandemic. How unoriginal. I heard about Station Eleven on a podcast (forget which one) and it seemed interest and different enough to give it a try. I was looking for some fiction so decided to give it a try. I bought it as an Apple…

  • Book notes: The Three Marriages by David Whyte

    What started as some good posting momentum at the start of the year has slowed slightly. Pandemics will do that I suppose. I would like to say that I have been journaling a lot, but that would be a lie. At the start of things I spent far too much screen time on twitter and…

  • When Things Fall Apart

    I have been and still am a “fan” of Buddhism. I think I am allowed to be that and still be an Episcopalian. I think it started listening to Tim Ferris’s talk about the benefits of meditation. I’m not ready to fly to Tibet and renounce all of my earthly possessions, but I do think…

  • Reboot

    I am going to attempt to keep better track of the books I have read with quick posts here. These won’t be full reviews per se, but rather simply a note (perhaps just to myself) that I finished it and a few of the things I am taking away. The idea is that a year…

  • 90 Second Book Review: The Myth of the State

    I don’t consider myself a philosopher.  I’m more of more a “fan of philosophy” to borrow a phrase from my favorite podcaster.  I still have to look up the definition of meta-physics and epistemology.  I am not sure of the difference off the top of my head between existentialism and positivism.  But that doesn’t keep…

  • 90 Second Book Review: Self Reliance

    This book doesn’t need an intro, so I’ll make it short: Self Reliance was one of several essays written by American Transcendentalist movement.  Emerson is also sort of a Socrates to Henry David Thoreau’s Plato. You can read it online for free, but the specific version I am reviewing here was put together by the Domino Project.  It…

  • 90 second book review: Red Queen

    Red Queen, by Matt Ridley, is another book that made it on my “to read” list somehow that I can’t quite remember, and came to be on my “to read” pile by way of Half Price Books. Since I can’t remember how I became aware of it, I also can’t remember what interested me about…