Dmitrii Calzago
A good overview of Messner's accomplishments, from the Alps, to the Himalayas, to his long-distance adventures in cold and hot places, EU politics, and the museums. I was familiar with the first two, having read his earlier books, but knew nothing of what he did after finishing off the eight-thousanders and the seven summits. I enjoyed catching up and for the first time saw the philosophical side of Reinhold (it was probably there in the earlier books, but I was more focused on the details of climbing back then). So I liked “My Life at the Limit,” but I am not sure if just the highlights of his life would satisfy someone not already familiar with Herr Messner.
Some quotes that stood out to me:
“...if I use bolts, there's no such thing as ‘impossible' anymore, and without this, adventures are unthinkable. I only experience real adventure when I don't know what the outcome will be.”
“We'd learned how to survive, and it was this that gave us the self-assurance that made us strong in normal life. I was never scared that I might not get my life sorted out, whereas my father was always scared.”
“It is through resisting death that we humans experience what it is to be human. And it is in the seeming paradox that the most fundamental reasons for climbing mountains or seeking out extreme situations are to be found...“
“...I can't live without the experience of pushing things to the limit. The symptom of my disorder is defined by a lust for life that comes from putting my life at risk.”
“Having everything is boring; I'm convinced of that. Once you have something—knowledge, skills, possessions—or have achieved something—climbing Mount Everest, for example—it becomes banal... The experience remains, for a while at least, but for me the feeling of curiosity about the next challenge, the next question, is always stronger... When I am identifying an objective, the summit is everything... Once this has been achieved, I need a new task, a new idea, a new project. I've been lucky so far—I've always been able to get myself motivated for the next new thing.”
“...Even when I fell off the castle wall... I simply told myself I'd find something else to do, even if I had to do it in a wheelchair. As long as I have my set objectives, I am confident. ...Owning things is boring—obligations and responsibilities. It interests me less than creating things... Throughout my life I've usually realized when it was time to say, “That's enough of that; I need something new.”
“Perhaps the true purpose of life is simply to express ourselves as best we can. Maybe my ability to keep finding new challenges appropriate to my age is part of the happiness, the thing that keeps me young, creative, and full of life.”
I liked it - the explanation of whisky making and the comparison of distilleries is excellent - but I couldn't finish it. Andrew Jefford is a good writer and he has done his homework, but the subject just doesn't warrant a 400-page book: the human history and the natural history of Islay just aren't that interesting to a general audience in the grand scheme of things.
My favorite quote, which illustrates the writing style:
“What distinguishes malt whisky from vodka is, precisely, its impurities – a bundle of assorted alcohols, esters, aldehydes, phenols and acids which are usually termed ‘congeners'. These are precious; these are, indeed, the whole point... The pot still, if you like, is the bicycle of the distilling world. Technically superseded long ago, but still the greatest and most efficient machine ever invented for the purpose for which it is used.”
This is a reasonable, high-level overview of all Tour de France races between 1903 and 2013: Each gets half-a-page of text with highlights (4-6 short paragraphs), at least one photo, a set of key statistics, and a full-page map. Some famous locations get their own description, a few photographs get the full spread. The book is a good introduction to the history – you learn all the big names, the famous anecdotes, you see the race format evolve over the ages – but, obviously, a superficial one. A decent coffee-table book for a cycling enthusiast. The consistent layout encourages comparisons, between routes and average speeds and such, which is the other main strength of the book, after its breadth.
Fascinating view into life on a ship in 1830's, as well as a portrait of early California that anyone with a connection to the state would appreciate. This was my first book about sailing, not counting some Jules Verne stuff I read as a child, so I enjoyed learning about long-distance travel in the age of sail. Descriptions of life in the young coastal towns that Dana visited – San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey – were illuminating and, taking into account attitudes of the time, probably as balanced as one can expect.
In this little book, one of the more contemplative persons present when Twitter was founded, Dom Sagolla, tries to show us how far 140 characters can take us in a richly connected social network. This is the best attempt I've seen at defining a Twitter aesthetic, at exemplifying all the ways that the medium can be used. Too many people – in my view, unfortunately – either dismiss Twitter as a cumbersome or narcissistic communication method or just exploit it as yet another broadcast channel, usually for marketing purposes. If everyone on Twitter internalized the ideas from this book, it would certainly be a better place. To quote the author (who does get lofty at times): “Let us collectively raise the level of discourse online. What starts as a relentless tide of simple-minded chatter resembles the most perfect wave of literary turbulence under the right conditions.”
History of human space ambitions, from Tsiolkovsky to Mir, with everything in between covered with admirable detail. Specific programs, like Apollo, have seen many books dedicated to them, but this may be the only volume that covers everything, including military and commercial developments, up through about 1999. I found some parts tedious, but there are plenty of fascinating and very human anecdotes, too. For an American author, Heppenheimer covers Soviet space history expertly and without obvious bias.
Beautiful artwork, solid print quality. Not being familiar with details of Thoreau's life, I learned a good amount from the comic and the essay that followed. As you can imagine, compressing 16 years of life into 76 pages of a graphic novel results in a rushed and disjointed narrative, which makes generous assumptions about reader's knowledge of the background. (Those not knowledgeable may find themselves frustrated by the lack of context.)
A solid Vonnegut book, with a unique premise and perspective. Our big brains are, indeed, the sources and (sometimes) solutions of all our big problems. Fun read, but not as incisive as his other works. This is perhaps a good introduction to Kurt's writing, though I cannot help but pitch “Mother Night” for such a role.
A riveting true adventure story about five Norwegians and a Swede sailing a balsa-wood raft from Peru to French Polynesia. The year is 1947 and there are no ships that could realistically help the crew of this experimental craft (although ham radio operators from across the world were able to relay their updates). Fascinating subject matter, clear writing style, and good pacing make this a wonderful read, even with the occasional racially insensitive language (common for the time period and not born of disrespect, as author's life attests). The original raft is now at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo.
I've enjoyed Bike Snob's magazine columns (and, to some extent, their irreverent attitude) and I like what he is trying to do in this book (cover the lore and sub-cultures of cycling while making us laugh), but the amateurish writing style got annoying quickly. It worked in a magazine, but not in a book. Still, I don't know of another book that covers these topics, so I'd still recommend it. Maybe your tolerance for corny humor is higher?
Loved the book. Unique idea, beautiful artwork. I learned a lot about the historical connections between people and ideas in mathematics of late 19th and early 20th century.
My main quibble is that the only place in which people of color appear in this book is in the depiction of prostitutes (in 3 frames on page 210). I get that most of this takes place in Europe 80+ years ago, involving real persons, so I am not proposing adding “token” people of color to the story. I also get that modern Athens is a diverse city, which, I am willing to believe, has sex workers of African descent. Despite factual correctness, this choice of supporting characters does nothing to advance the story, while countering the attempts to make students with non-European roots feel part of the scientific community. Imagine a young African girl trying to learn about the foundations of computer science and only seeing people like her as those working with their bodies and not their minds. This unnecessary perpetuation of stereotypes could have been easily avoided; I hope it will be in future editions.
Love Bukowski's honesty. And he can spin a lovely phrase at times. But I just don't get anything but pity out of the aimless wanderings of Chinaski. Memorable quotes:
I had decided against religion a couple years back. If it were true, it made fools out of people, or it drew fools. And if it weren't true, the fools were all the more foolish.
And then along came Hemingway. What a thrill! He knew how to lay down the line. It was a joy. Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.
...That's four punches a day. Then you go home, or to your room or wherever, sleep, come back and hit it four more times each working day until you get fired, quit, die, or retire.
Part one of reads like a Steinbeck novel: remarkable characters with humble backgrounds, set in the American West, beautifully painted. I had to keep reminding myself that this is a memoir. The second half is less beautiful, but interesting as a depiction of the narrator's huge transformation (her “education”). The big theme, perhaps the biggest, is the strength of the ties we have to our younger selves, to the memories, beliefs, and identities we've built up in our formative years. Sadly, I failed to fully understand the author's monumental struggle to make sense of the past tragedies, to act on them, to let go of them.
Cute idea and excellent execution in this guide to our Solar System (from the perspective of a travel guide). Here is a description of skydiving into Saturn:
“...You'll start your fall in a layer of wispy, yellowish ammonia ice clouds. After falling ten minutes or so you'll have traveled more than sixty miles, and you'll start to encounter thicker, redder ammonia hydrosulfide ice clouds. Finally, you'll reach some more familiar, white water vapor clouds. The entire fall will be very dark—the sunlight is only 1 percent that on Earth at the cloud tops, and rapidly gets darker the deeper into the atmosphere you fall. Eventually the skies will fade to pitch-black. Feel free to fall for a bit into the dark abyss. You're in no danger of hitting the ground because there is no ground to hit, but it is possible to go so deep that your suit implodes under the pressure...”
I can understand some of the one- and two-star reviews: there is a good amount of repetition; the chosen quotes from the ancients barely scratch the surface of their work; the authors' explanations do not always improve on the original quotes. And yet... more often than not the repetition helps reinforce the key ideas, at least for this neophyte, the quotes are well chosen for the most part, and the modern-day examples are a useful - at times alleviating - counterpart to some of the (perfectly forgivable) archaisms.
I associate Lem with high quality science fiction. There is solid science there, in each of the stories, which is appreciated by the engineer in me. These space-travel tales focus on many subtle details of what it would be like to zoom around the solar system routinely. And there is good fiction, too, especially in the first three of the five stories. I will happily procure and read the follow-up volume of Pirx tales.
As philosophical as sci-fi gets, and as cynical. A fascinating exploration of the question of interspecies communication, with all the game-theoretical analysis that facing a clearly superior civilization entails. Generally a challenging read, though, I suspect, not because of bad translation, but rather one that authentically captures the author's writing style.
Memorable quotes:
“A civilization as “spread out” techno-economically as ours, with front lines swimming in wealth and the rear guard dying of hunger, had by that very spread already been given a direction of future development. First, the troops behind would attempt to catch up with the leaders in material wealth, which, only because it had not yet been attained, would justify the effort of that pursuit; and, in turn, the prosperous vanguard, being an object of envy and competition, would thereby be confirmed in its own value... when the first emissaries of Earth went walking among the planets, Earth's other sons would be dreaming not about such expeditions but about a piece of bread.”
“...a fetus, quite handsome at birth, but strangling on its own umbilical cord, the cord being that arm of culture which draws the vital fluids of knowledge up from the placenta of the natural world.”
I love the idea of this book: To expand the reader's musical horizons and deepen their understanding by grouping music pieces not by genres or time periods, but by cross-cutting and tantalizingly amorphous qualities and attributes, such as slowness, quietness, intimacy, virtuosity, sadness, etc.
I also love the diversity of styles among the pieces that the author highlights (each chapter ends with a specific list of music tracks, ranging from Duke Ellington to Drake, most of which are nowadays accessible via subscription services like Apple Music, Spotify, or, in my case, Tidal). The book helped me discover new musicians by encouraging exploration with a music player: you'll want to carve out 2-3 hours, put on your best headphones, and read a chapter while clicking around on the computer. It's a wonderful rabbit-hole to descend into.
Unfortunately, with some exceptions, the bulk of the narrative is too brisk with the factual material on one hand (I wish the author, who is clearly a walking encyclopedia of music, would dwell on some of the concrete topics or would dig more into history) and, on the other hand, too heavy on the abstract, the music-theoretical, and the know-it-all attitude. So, sadly, I gave up after several chapters. The frustrations of reading overpowered the joys of discovery. To give an example passage, which I kinda get, with lots of re-reading, but don't get much out of:
“If you understand music as free enterprise, which is how most people in America have understood it since the decline of the piano in the living room—the mid-1970's, pretty much—then the spectrum of quietness, intimacy, and silence in music might seem a form of selfishness or self-sabotage. It is not wanting to be heard, or only wanting to be heard on your own terms. But if you listen another way, the quiet impulse might be a populist idea. It might reach more people. It is an expression of civility. It is not trying to interrupt or drown out anything else. It allows for the rest of life to be heard. And it connects to a much greater pool of history and human expression.”
If that kind of writing is music to your ears (ha!), you will love “Every Song Ever”. Otherwise, proceed with caution, maybe see if your library has this title.
What I appreciated the most in this book was the glimpse of a perspective of an urban black young man in America. The best books affect one's world view and Ta-Nehisi managed to do that for me, subtly. The concepts he weaves through the book - The Dream, “the people who think they are white,” the violation of the body - are interesting to ponder and useful to apply later. The book is not about solutions and that's okay. The illustration of problems, done in an emotional, personal, honest tone, is its strength. But it's not without flaws. Ta-Nehisi is weakest when he makes sweeping generalizations (e.g., why lump firefighters with police?) and overstates his claim (e.g., that suburbia is primarily a result of white flight).
The quotes that stood out to me, for one reason or another, are:
“Somewhere out there beyond the firmament, past the asteroid belt, there were other worlds were children did not regularly fear for their bodies. I knew this because there was a large television resting in my living room. In the evenings I would sit before this television bearing witness to the dispatches from this other world. There were little white boys with complete collections of football cards, and they're only want was a popular girlfriend and they're only worry was poison oak.”
“We could not get out. The ground we walked was trip-wired. The air we breathed was toxic. The water stunted our growth. We could not get out.”
“I was learning the craft of poetry which really was an intensive version of what my mother had taught me years ago – the craft of writing as the art of thinking. Poetry aims for an economy of truth – loose and useless words must be discarded, and I found that these loose and useless words were not separate from loose and useless thoughts... Poetry was the processing of my thoughts until the slag of justification fell away and I was left with the cold steel truths of life.”
“The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its wheel and fear, and whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority.”
“Malcolm made sense to me not out of a love of violence but because nothing in my life prepared me to understand tear gas as deliverance, as those Black History Month martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement did.”
“You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels. And to varying degrees this is true of all life. The difference is that you do not have the privilege of living in ignorance of this is essential fact.”
“Perhaps that was, is, the hope of the movement: to awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts of what their need to be white, to talk like they are white, to think that they are white, which is to think that they are beyond the design flaws of humanity, has done to the world.”
“The Dream is the same habit that endangers the planet, the same habit that sees our bodies stowed away in prisons in ghettos.”
I rate books stricter than most: a good book gets 3 stars, not 5. To get 4, a book has to be written well and to stand out well above average, as I see it. It has to be a book I can see myself reading again, for pleasure or for a deeper understanding. Only a book that significantly affects me – helps me see a major new side of life or a new artistic style – gets 5 stars from me.
“Sapiens” gave me new insights into – or at least new “food for thought” about – the human condition. Presentation of the early “revolutions”, particularly the pessimistic perspective on agriculture, is interesting. I was finding intriguing parallels to Hickel's “The Divide” and Jetha and Ryan's “Sex at Dawn”. The chapters on religions and Capitalism are powerful. Yuval spares no punches, which is much appreciated.
The book is not without flaws – “true,” sometimes it throws a random straw-man out there – but its strengths overcome its shortcomings by a long shot.
Well researched and well written glimpse into the era of hijackings and one hijacking in particular
Fascinating reminder of how different flying was in the sixties and seventies. The author masterfully weaves together a portrait of those times with vignettes of many specific incidents and a deeper look at one of the more fascinating hijacking stories. Fast and pleasant read, of particular interest to aviation buffs or students of history of those turbulent times. For me, 3 stars is a solid book, while 4 would have required deeper subject matter, which the across-the-board delusional hijackers simply cannot deliver.
Not a strong work. Many reviews here nail its flaws. I will only share some quotes that stood out
All manner of men came to work for the News: everything from wild young Turks who wanted to rip the world in half and start all over again—to tired, beer-bellied old hacks who wanted nothing more than to live out their days in peace before a bunch of lunatics ripped the world in half.
...
Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception—especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.
...
Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that wee were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles—a restless idealism on the one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other—that kept me going.
This is a well focused illustration of the profound importance of habits in our lives and in lives of organizations and societies that we are part of. The book pulls together many interesting and thoroughly researched examples of habits – from neurological research, marketing, team sports, corporate management, etc – to demonstrate the commonality of a “habit loop” (cue > routine > reward) in all of these settings. The conclusion, reiterated throughout, is that habits can be changed. The appendix of my (first paperback) edition includes a general framework for adjust habit loops through experimentation (essentially: identify the routine, experiment with rewards, isolate the cue, have a plan). Overall, a fairly quick and entertaining read on a subject relevant to everyone. Certainly, anyone trying to overcome a bad habit - we all have them - will benefit from knowing the underlying process.
Good read for anyone involved with or contemplating involvement with a small business. Despite its flaws, the book raises important questions that any entrepreneur or anyone working with one should be asking. Your answers don't have to align with Peter's - I found his analysis simplistic and misleading in many cases - but the questions are absolutely worth asking.
“Zero to One” tries to boil down many complex situations to simple categories and choices. Entire continents (Europe) and most business models (anything “incremental”) are dismissed. I realize it makes for a shorter, crisper book, but I am put off by such obvious under-appreciation of subtlety and nuance. The author is weakest when he dips into pop psychology with generalizations about optimism/pessimism of entire nations or psych profiles of startup founders. When Peter sticks closer to his area of expertise, however, interesting material abounds: the concept of “secrets” about nature or people, the characteristics of monopolies, the observations about Power Law as it applies to individuals or markets or distribution, the rundown of startup basics (team, board, hiring, the seven viability questions), the admonitions about sales and distribution.
A fascinating view at the world - especially Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya - through the eyes of an American newspaper correspondent. Jeffrey puts to paper the details and the feelings that weren't fit for newsprint. The resulting narrative is insightful, at times a bit brash, considering the gravity of events described, but certainly honest. He is honest about himself, his profession, and the sometimes disastrous effects of American foreign policy. Here are a few examples of the excellent writing in this book:
“A current shot up between us. That's exactly the sensation a good interview delivers: it gives you a surge, it makes you feel connected, it adds some purpose to life. Tewodros saw from how hard I was pressing my pen into my notebook that I was with him all the way.” [p.80]
“I didn't have the capacity to absorb all that was being asked of me, nor the courage to tell these men who were putting their hand on my heart the truth. I wasn't a conduit to a just world. I was simply a reporter.” [p.131]
“Elections are anxious in most of Africa, even in Kenya. They are not just a race. They are a test. They key question is never who wins. It's whether the loser accepts.” [p.255]
“As I watched him disappear toward the ocean, a diminishing, hunched-over figure in the unrelenting light, I realized that however crazy this world gets, however accustomed to misery someone may be, we are all the same. No one ever totally gives up hope, no one is made in such a way that he is grief-proof. Not even in Somalia. Everyone seeks, till the very end, to preserve whatever dignity he can. The old man went off to bury his little girl properly.” [p.288]