Loved this book and will definitely read again — recommend for those interested in the craft of writing.
“So often fictions So much snap, crackle, pop!
Loved this book and will definitely read again — recommend for those interested in the craft of writing.
“So often fictions that experiment formally do so at the expense of feeling. They toy on surfaces or are purely cerebral affairs, don’t explore human complexities. But the mostly unconventional narratives I’ve been discussing have dealt powerfully with core human matters. … And they have found patterns other than the wave to do this, or worked in a doubled, moiré relation with the wave, one pattern upon another. I believe they’ve done this organically: a meander or net or explosion was simply the pattern the material needed.”...more
Brilliant-de Botton has officially convinced me to read *In Search of Lost Time*!
Will absolutely read this one again! Sooooo quotable, I highlighted sBrilliant-de Botton has officially convinced me to read *In Search of Lost Time*!
Will absolutely read this one again! Sooooo quotable, I highlighted so much. Excellent.
"In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity."...more
“Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”
Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE
Great quick read, especially if you l“Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”
Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE
Great quick read, especially if you like these kinds of books. Reminded me of James Clear's Atomic Habits, but snappier, and less focused on process—more on the why.
Very quotable, can see myself revisiting this one.
“If you want to have more, you have to become more. Success is not something you pursue. What you pursue will elude you; it can be like trying to chase butterflies. Success is something you attract by the person you become.”
“There is a point in every race when a rider encounters his real opponent and understands that it's himself. In my most painful moments on the bike, I am at my most curious, and I wonder each and every time how I will respond. Will I discover my innermost weakness, or will I seek out my innermost strength?" — Lance Armstrong...more
"If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and "If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death."
Watts was amazingly prescient when he wrote this 70 years ago, it is just as relatable today. And quite the trip! Basically, being human is to be caught in a constant mental feedback loops from which there is (essentially) no escape.
“This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the 'ability' to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable.”
This book is incredible on so many levels, and so very timely, especially for minds caught in quarantine:
“Indeed, one of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one’s own existence, to be absorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and people. Conversely, one of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and the surrounding world.”
“What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.”
Free from clutching at themselves the hands can handle; free from looking after themselves the eyes can see; free from trying to understand itself thought can think. In such feeling, seeing, and thinking life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself. In this moment it is finished....more
After letting this one marinate a bit, and with the pandemic still raging, this book has become even more timely and important. Trying to take every wAfter letting this one marinate a bit, and with the pandemic still raging, this book has become even more timely and important. Trying to take every word to heart.
*All, save a very few, find life at an end just when they’re getting ready to live.*
“They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”...more
Engrossing book, LOVED it! One of my favorites of December 2019.
Very reminiscent of one of my all time favorite books in general, Bryson's A Short HiEngrossing book, LOVED it! One of my favorites of December 2019.
Very reminiscent of one of my all time favorite books in general, Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. This has that classic Bryson charm with lots of interesting factoids.
Definitely a deep dive, kind of like hopping on the Magic School Bus with Miss Frizzle.
Would revisit this one in the future.
“Just sitting quietly, doing nothing at all, your brain churns through more information in thirty seconds than the Hubble Space Telescope has processed in thirty years. A morsel of cortex one cubic millimeter in size—about the size of a grain of sand—could hold two thousand terabytes of information, enough to store all the movies ever made, trailers included, or about 1.2 billion copies of this book.”
“Pain is full of paradoxes. Its most self-evident characteristic is that it hurts–that’s what it is there for, after all–but sometimes pain feels slightly wonderful: when your muscles ache after a long run, say, or when you slide into a bath that is at once unbearably hot but also, somehow, deliciously not.”...more
I will definitely be revisiting this one—it's almost like a long, cool drink of water.
“You have to disconnect in order to better connect with yourselfI will definitely be revisiting this one—it's almost like a long, cool drink of water.
“You have to disconnect in order to better connect with yourself and with the people you serve and love. People don’t have enough silence in their lives because they don’t have enough solitude. And they don’t get enough solitude because they don’t seek out or cultivate silence. It’s a vicious cycle that prevents stillness and reflection, and then stymies good ideas, which are almost always hatched in solitude.”
Excellent summary with takeaways and quotes right here.
The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because of the chapter titled “Accepting a Higher Power.” Just because many people believed things in the past does not make it true, as Holiday implies. This sentence was the final nail in the coffin for the fifth star: “Perhaps you’re not ready to do that, to let anything into your heart. That’s okay. There’s no rush. Just know that this step is open to you. It’s waiting. And it will help restore you to sanity when you’re ready.”
I'm not even going to get into it because everyone is entitled to their opinion and otherwise this is such a peaceful book. HOWEVER—insinuating that people aren't sane until they "accept a higher power" though is ... mildly insane. ...more
*2020* UpdateI find myself referencing and recommending this book to people quite often. Might need to do a reread soon.
Similar in many ways to both *2020* UpdateI find myself referencing and recommending this book to people quite often. Might need to do a reread soon.
Similar in many ways to both The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery. Lots of short "common tendencies" vs any true or rock solid "laws." Still very interesting, I can see myself revisiting this one in the future.
In fact, I've decided I want to add this one to my physical collection. A good book to jump in and out of.
Here's an excellent overview of the 18 laws Greene covers in the book: Summary
"If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty." — Yoshida Kenkō
"We can also expose ourselves to places on the planet where all our normal compass points are scrambled—a vastly different culture or certain landscapes where the human element seems particularly puny, such as the open sea, a vast expanse of snow, a particularly enormous mountain. Physically confronted with what dwarfs us, we are forced to reverse our normal perception, in which we are the center and measure of everything.
In the face of the Sublime, we feel a shiver, a foretaste of death itself, something too large for our minds to encompass. And for a moment it shakes us out of our smugness and releases us from the deathlike grip of habit and banality.
In the end, think of this philosophy in the following terms: Since the beginning of human consciousness, our awareness of death has terrified us. This terror has shaped our beliefs, our religions, our institutions, and so much of our behavior in ways we cannot see or understand. We humans have become the slaves to our fears and our evasions.
When we turn this around, becoming more aware of our mortality, we experience a taste of true freedom. We no longer feel the need to restrict what we think and do, in order to make life predictable. We can be more daring without feeling afraid of the consequences. We can cut loose from all the illusions and addictions that we employ to numb our anxiety. We can commit fully to our work, to our relationships, to all our actions. And once we experience some of this freedom, we will want to explore further and expand our possibilities as far as time will allow us."
"Let us rid death of its strangeness, come to know it. Let us have nothing on our minds as often as death. At every moment let us picture it in our imagination in all its aspects ... It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom ... He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint." — Michel de Montaigne
“You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.”...more
I believe silence is the new luxury. Silence is more exclusive and long lasting than other luxuries.
Totally in love with this little 160 page meditatiI believe silence is the new luxury. Silence is more exclusive and long lasting than other luxuries.
Totally in love with this little 160 page meditation on silence. Will definitely be revisiting this one.
Thoughts for Pondering:
*It is easy to assume that the essence of technology is technology itself, but that is wrong. The essence is you and me. It’s about how we are altered by the technology we employ, what we hope to learn, our relationship with nature, those we love, the time we spend, the energy that is consumed and how much freedome we relinquish to technology.
We are going to give up our freedom in our eagerness to use new technology, Heidegger claimed. To shift from being free people to becoming resources. The thought is ever more fitting now than when he first expressed it. We will not become a resource for one another, unfortunately, but for something less appealing. A resource for organizations such as Apple, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Snapchat and governments, who are trying to map us all out, with our voluntary assistance in order to use or sell the information. It smacks of exploitation.*
_____________________
*When you’ve invested a lot of time in being accessible and keeping up with what’s happening, it’s easy to conclude that it all has a certain value, even if what you have done might not be important. This is called rationalization. The New York Review of Books labeled the battle between producers of apps “the new opium wars,” and the paper claims that “marketers have adopted addiction as an explicit commercial strategy.” The only difference is that the pushers aren’t peddling a product that can be smoked in a pipe, but rather is ingested via sugar-coated apps.
In a way, silence is the opposition to all of this. It’s about getting inside what you are doing. Experiencing rather than overthinking. Allowing each moment to be big enough. Not living through other people and other things. Shutting out the world and fashioning your own silence whenever you run, cook food, have sex, study, chat, work, think of a new idea, read or dance.*
_________________________
Here’s to a little more silence in your life! ...more
Godin is the man! My 8th Godin book, this one was surprisingly good, and as always, right on point.
Recommended reading for anyone interested in careeGodin is the man! My 8th Godin book, this one was surprisingly good, and as always, right on point.
Recommended reading for anyone interested in career development. This one might get a second round, excellent reminders.
“The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship. Shipping means hitting the publish button on your blog, showing a presentation to the sales team, answering the phone, selling the muffins, sending out your references. Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world.”...more
***June 2019, 1st Reread: Just as excellent as the first time around. Working on implementing many of the principles. Will probably read this again.*****June 2019, 1st Reread: Just as excellent as the first time around. Working on implementing many of the principles. Will probably read this again.***
Want to improve your story? This book is for you.
Sometime you read things when you need to hear it. As an entrepreneur, and a writer, it can be easy to get lost in the narrative. Your story can be easily convoluted and needs to be simplified for maximum effectiveness.
I will definitely read this book again. There are many actionable steps throughout that I want to revisit and work on. From simplifying your website, to establishing a simple tagline, this book has excellent advice.
Most Important Points:
- Sell the problem you solve, not the product.
- Don't be the hero, be the guide.
One of my best reads of 2019 so far.
*** Edit *** It's been a couple weeks, and I can't stop thinking about this book and recommending it to people.
Further Notes:
"What stories teach us is that people’s internal desire to resolve a frustration is a greater motivator than their desire to solve an external problem." ____________________
"As an experiment, let’s see if you can cut half the words out of your website. Can you replace some of your text with images? Can you reduce whole paragraphs into three or four bullet points? Can you summarize sentences into bite-sized soundbites? If so, make those changes soon. The rule is this: the fewer words you use, the more likely it is that people will read them."...more
I went in knowing only the basics, a) I loved the title, and b) it’s a cult feminist classic. Surprisingly funny, Chris Kraus explores her psycho-sexuI went in knowing only the basics, a) I loved the title, and b) it’s a cult feminist classic. Surprisingly funny, Chris Kraus explores her psycho-sexual obsession with the eponymous “Dick” by crafting her own brand of “confessional literature” she dubbed “lonely girl phenomenology.”
Maybe it’s because I’m also pushing 40, or maybe it’s because I had a somewhat similar situationship (to some extent) once upon a time. Although not entirely one-sided, there is no denying the mega load of cringe I poured into passionate emails to someone I was more enamored with as an idea, rather than an actual person.
To love or crush from afar can be a trip, an emotional rollercoaster, and when given enough time can take over your headspace and ignite extensive existential introspection. It’s also much easier to project onto an infatuation from a distance, as Kraus documents in *I Love Dick.*
Uniquely written it is a disjointed epistolary novel with autofiction elements blurring the lines of fiction, essay, and memoir. Kraus is her own antiheroine, evolving through self aware revelations hard won from an intense parasocial relationship.
A story of identity and finding oneself whether it’s within or without a relationship, *I Love Dick* is a complicated, multilayered deep dive on female obsessiveness and social place. Occasionally beautiful, difficult and uncomfortable often, Kraus called it part rom-com, part anthropological case study.
At times, it left me gasping—and I’m sure part of the reason I enjoyed it was due to my ability to commiserate. Controversial and polarizing, you'll either love it or hate it.
*Synopsis*
When Chris Kraus, an unsuccessful artist pushing 40, spends an evening with a rogue academic named Dick, she falls madly and inexplicably in love, enlisting her husband in her haunted pursuit. Dick proposes a kind of game between them, but when he fails to answer their letters Chris continues alone, transforming an adolescent infatuation into a new form of philosophy.
A literary sensation when it was first published in 1997, it is widely considered to be the most important feminist novel of the past two decades.
Would revisit this one in the future as it's so short and interesting—very light on Extremely readable—on par with Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.
Would revisit this one in the future as it's so short and interesting—very light on the physics.
My favorite topic would have to be time travel, which Hawking believes is theoretically possible, but unlikely.
This book was published 7 months after Hawking's death and was finished by his scientific colleagues, friends, and family using his writings, lectures, and notes.
Included is a foreword from Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne, who played Hawking in the movie The Theory of Everything; an introduction by Nobel Prize-winning physicist and Hawking's lifelong friend, Kip Thorne; and a touching afterword from Hawking's daughter, Lucy.
“So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.”...more
Taleb spares no one, ripping professions, beliefs, jobs, and people—by name—apart. Especially Steven Pinker, Reads like the Burn Book from Mean Girls.
Taleb spares no one, ripping professions, beliefs, jobs, and people—by name—apart. Especially Steven Pinker, whom he calls out more than twice.
Highly offensive, I found this book a riotous good time, hilarious, and razor sharp.
This ended up being one of my favorite books of 2018, completed on December 31st.
I will read this one again next year, for, as Taleb points out:
"... learning is rooted in repetition and convexity, meaning that the reading of a single text twice is more profitable than reading two different things once, provided of course that said text has some depth of content."
"Extending such logic, we can show that much of what we call 'belief' is some kind of background furniture for the human mind, more metaphorical than real. It may work as therapy."
"Give me a few lines written by any man and I will find enough to get him hung" goes the saying attributed to Richelieu, Voltaire, Talleyrand (a vicious censor during the French revolution phase of terror), and a few others."
"The IYI (Intellectual Yet Idiot) joins a club to get travel privileges; if he is a social scientist, he uses statistics without knowing how they are derived (like Steven Pinker and psycholophasters in general); when in the United Kingdom, he goes to literary festivals and eats cucumber sandwiches, taking small bites at a time; he drinks red wine with steak (never white); he used to believe that dietary fat was harmful and has now completely reversed himself (information in both cases is derived from the same source); he takes statins because his doctor told him to do so; he fails to understand ergodicity, and, when explained to him, he forgets about it soon after; he doesn't use Yiddish words even when talking business; he studies grammar before speaking a language; he has a cousin who worked with someone who knows the Queen; he has never read FrédéricDark, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshott, John Gray, Ammianus Marcellinus, Ibn, Battuta, Saadia Gaon, or Joseph de Maistre; he has never gotten drunk with Russians; he never drinks to the point where he starts breaking glasses (or, preferably, chairs); he doesn't even know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba (which in Brooklyn's is 'can't tell sh**t from shinola'); he doesn't know that there is no difference between 'pseudointellectual' and 'intellectual' in the absence of skin in the game; he has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past five years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics."...more
*“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”*
My new mantra.
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor*“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”*
My new mantra.
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”
Hopefully, this book will help inspire me to not be so precious about writing. However, I'm still agonizing over the deadline I have tonight and am writing this review instead of finishing the article ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯...more
“It is how we choose what we do, and how we approach it, that will determine whether the sum of our days adds up to a formless blur, or to Flows well.
“It is how we choose what we do, and how we approach it, that will determine whether the sum of our days adds up to a formless blur, or to something resembling a work of art.”
Still enjoyable, yet looking forward to the extended version.
“To pursue mental operations to any depth, a person has to learn to concentrate attention. Without focus, consciousness is in a state of chaos.”...more
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