Take a photo of a barcode or cover
alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)
.jpg)
"A Responsibility to Awe" by poet and astronaut Rebecca Elson is the heartbeat of this book -- the author goes on a yearlong quest to see if we can experience the overview effect from right here on earth, in the middle of a city, even.
The overview effect is a lasting shift in perspective that many astronauts report after seeing earth from space: oneness with all life, devotion to and protection of the earth's ecosystem, a long-term view of humanity, awe and wonder at our insignificance and uniqueness in the cosmos.
I was drawn to reading this book because I certainly feel the crampt and restless feeling of staying inside day after day, and even when I go out I feel like escaping the city is an impossible task. So a little perspective shift is in order.
The overview effect is a lasting shift in perspective that many astronauts report after seeing earth from space: oneness with all life, devotion to and protection of the earth's ecosystem, a long-term view of humanity, awe and wonder at our insignificance and uniqueness in the cosmos.
I was drawn to reading this book because I certainly feel the crampt and restless feeling of staying inside day after day, and even when I go out I feel like escaping the city is an impossible task. So a little perspective shift is in order.
This was the first time I read Beowulf. Don't sleep on that intro, it helped me enjoy the story more. It centralizes the question of the story: How do you make a legacy live on long after a life has gone?
The alliteration apparent in the audio accentuates the experience, 10/10, poets oughta aspire higher.
Now, about the modern slang. The "Bro!" bit is funny, but Beowulf's swagger shines best in the bold punchy lines. If you like your Bossip tweets saucy, then there is hope for you here. Persnickety pipe smokers best be packing.
The alliteration apparent in the audio accentuates the experience, 10/10, poets oughta aspire higher.
Now, about the modern slang. The "Bro!" bit is funny, but Beowulf's swagger shines best in the bold punchy lines. If you like your Bossip tweets saucy, then there is hope for you here. Persnickety pipe smokers best be packing.
-%20Thoughts%20on%20Faith.jpg)
I always like listening to Anne Lamott tell her stories and share her wisdom. This book wasn't my favorite of her collections but it was still funny and comforting.
My first Maggie Nelson book; I am intrigued and would read more.
This book is about her experience sitting through the trial of the man who killed her aunt Jane, an aunt she had never met, decades earlier. But that is only a premise for the book: it is much more about Maggie's life, her gaze, and her complicated relationships with her family.
I liked listening to her meandering and lyrical reflections, it is like reading a beautiful diary. Cassandra Campbell's voicework was great as always, too.
This book is about her experience sitting through the trial of the man who killed her aunt Jane, an aunt she had never met, decades earlier. But that is only a premise for the book: it is much more about Maggie's life, her gaze, and her complicated relationships with her family.
I liked listening to her meandering and lyrical reflections, it is like reading a beautiful diary. Cassandra Campbell's voicework was great as always, too.
I love listening to adventure survival books and stories about missing people, so this was an obvious recommendation that kept popping up on my radar.
I had heard about Christopher Knight before, and his story is fascinating. One day when he was 20 years old he quit his job, went on a solo road trip, and then decided to get lost. He entered the woods in northern Maine with basically just his clothes on his back and didn't emerge until he was arrested nearly three decades later. He had never gone camping even once before that.
So many versions of "why?" that even Knight could not (and in some cases would not) answer--but I think the author did a great job at researching and provided satisfying hypotheses.
Can you call him crazy? If your definition of crazy is "does not conform to societal expectations in the American 20th century" then yes. But that is hardly fair -- it would be crazy to say that those expectations are a healthy standard to hold someone to! But if your definition is "is a danger to themselves or others" then the answer is a definitive No.
I enjoyed thinking about that question, it is an interesting one. I also liked thinking about how honesty is such an important value to many of the hermits that the author cited: it might not have been high on the list before their hermitage started but it was certainly priority number one after they emerged from it. Who would have been lying to them while they were all alone? Themselves. What made lying become intolerable to them? Perhaps because it could have lead to death, in Knight's case. Or maybe because it is the foundation of an entire society that they find intolerable.
Anyways... good read!
I had heard about Christopher Knight before, and his story is fascinating. One day when he was 20 years old he quit his job, went on a solo road trip, and then decided to get lost. He entered the woods in northern Maine with basically just his clothes on his back and didn't emerge until he was arrested nearly three decades later. He had never gone camping even once before that.
So many versions of "why?" that even Knight could not (and in some cases would not) answer--but I think the author did a great job at researching and provided satisfying hypotheses.
Can you call him crazy? If your definition of crazy is "does not conform to societal expectations in the American 20th century" then yes. But that is hardly fair -- it would be crazy to say that those expectations are a healthy standard to hold someone to! But if your definition is "is a danger to themselves or others" then the answer is a definitive No.
I enjoyed thinking about that question, it is an interesting one. I also liked thinking about how honesty is such an important value to many of the hermits that the author cited: it might not have been high on the list before their hermitage started but it was certainly priority number one after they emerged from it. Who would have been lying to them while they were all alone? Themselves. What made lying become intolerable to them? Perhaps because it could have lead to death, in Knight's case. Or maybe because it is the foundation of an entire society that they find intolerable.
Anyways... good read!
Going into this book I had a vague idea that it was about Dostoevsky's time in prison, or being politically persecuted... or something to that nature. I was so surprised that it is totally not about that, and still just as good as I had hoped.
I was completely blown away by the opening discussion on how algorithms will fail to accurately predict human behavior because they will not take into account that humans will act against their better interests out of spite for being called predictable. Take that, The Man! Lol. While I knew that scientific ideas had strong circulation in the 19th century (Frankenstein, etc), I had not thought about how refined the discussion could be, such that 150 years later Dostoevsky's argument is even more relevant now than it was during his time.
The second part is a day in the life of the narrator that kind of illustrates the anti-algorithm argument. The narrator is an antihero (he makes a coy meta reference to this at the end of the book): a man who has no friends because he refuses to play along by society's rules and thinks himself more intelligent because of it, who would be pitiable except he is so self-aggrandizing, who recognizes that the source of his mysogyny is his own self-hatred and self-loathing. In other words, the narrator is a portrait of chan internet.
A few days ago I read Max Read's analysis of the new David Fincher movie The Killer (maxread.substack.com/p/david-finchers-new-movie-the-killer) and his article describes the Loser Internet's ideal man, the "sigma male." So that description was fresh in my mind when I was reading Notes from Underground and I found the overlap between the two quite stunning. The Max Read article explains a brief history of the sigma male and how to recognize its characteristics, but if you want to deeply understand the psychology of why trolls reject society and hate women and idealize the sigma male, you will not find a better explanation than in Notes from Underground.
(PS Now that I think about it, I think the audiobook narrator I listened to also narrated Lolita? Interesting juxtaposition.)
I was completely blown away by the opening discussion on how algorithms will fail to accurately predict human behavior because they will not take into account that humans will act against their better interests out of spite for being called predictable. Take that, The Man! Lol. While I knew that scientific ideas had strong circulation in the 19th century (Frankenstein, etc), I had not thought about how refined the discussion could be, such that 150 years later Dostoevsky's argument is even more relevant now than it was during his time.
The second part is a day in the life of the narrator that kind of illustrates the anti-algorithm argument. The narrator is an antihero (he makes a coy meta reference to this at the end of the book): a man who has no friends because he refuses to play along by society's rules and thinks himself more intelligent because of it, who would be pitiable except he is so self-aggrandizing, who recognizes that the source of his mysogyny is his own self-hatred and self-loathing. In other words, the narrator is a portrait of chan internet.
A few days ago I read Max Read's analysis of the new David Fincher movie The Killer (maxread.substack.com/p/david-finchers-new-movie-the-killer) and his article describes the Loser Internet's ideal man, the "sigma male." So that description was fresh in my mind when I was reading Notes from Underground and I found the overlap between the two quite stunning. The Max Read article explains a brief history of the sigma male and how to recognize its characteristics, but if you want to deeply understand the psychology of why trolls reject society and hate women and idealize the sigma male, you will not find a better explanation than in Notes from Underground.
(PS Now that I think about it, I think the audiobook narrator I listened to also narrated Lolita? Interesting juxtaposition.)
Two girls in small town Arkansas: Monica went on to have a stable career as a journalist, while Darci's life spiraled into the rural American triad of poverty, abuse, and addiction. What steps and missteps caused the fork in their lives?
Monica set out to write this book in order to share the human experiences that clinical, academic statistics about the blighted fate of fly-over country fail to tell. We know the usual words that populate these stories: generational trauma, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, opioid epidemic, racism, evangelicals, recession, high school drop out, republicans. But why are all of these things connected and how do they actually affect a person's course in life?
Monica's reflections on her adolescence were so interesting to me because I could recognize much of what she described. I too grew up in rural towns. My upbringing was completely immersed in an evangelical bubble with no expectations for girls beyond homemaking. The class of 2007 at my local high school started with over 900 students and finished with 300. I knew a handful of women who had gone to college but all of them, with the exception of two who were teachers, had stopped working after getting married. So it was interesting to me that Monica could clearly identify the turning points in her and Darci's lives, the decisions that ended up being much more consequential than they had seemed at the time, as well as hearing the refrains voiced by those around her that unintentionally worked to hold people back from achieving or even desiring more out of life.
Monica set out to write this book in order to share the human experiences that clinical, academic statistics about the blighted fate of fly-over country fail to tell. We know the usual words that populate these stories: generational trauma, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, opioid epidemic, racism, evangelicals, recession, high school drop out, republicans. But why are all of these things connected and how do they actually affect a person's course in life?
Monica's reflections on her adolescence were so interesting to me because I could recognize much of what she described. I too grew up in rural towns. My upbringing was completely immersed in an evangelical bubble with no expectations for girls beyond homemaking. The class of 2007 at my local high school started with over 900 students and finished with 300. I knew a handful of women who had gone to college but all of them, with the exception of two who were teachers, had stopped working after getting married. So it was interesting to me that Monica could clearly identify the turning points in her and Darci's lives, the decisions that ended up being much more consequential than they had seemed at the time, as well as hearing the refrains voiced by those around her that unintentionally worked to hold people back from achieving or even desiring more out of life.
I loved the sketchy illustration style and use of color. The story was simple but purehearted.