K. Doerr

pedestrian theology with brief moments of poetry

Revisado: 04-22-24

The god is love mantra got a little gooey after many, many repetitions. Some of the language is beautiful, and the reader is good, so it might be worth a listen for some. If you want or need to be bludgeoned with simple minded optimism, this book may be your answer.

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My go-to book for falling asleep!

Revisado: 10-27-22

A truly soporific soliloquy! Long overlooked by etymologists, this book is clearly the source of our modern understanding of the word "corny". Jackson's narration stays true to the ideals of the author as well, with its wonderful economy of inflection. A must have for every insomniac.

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A complex history clearly told

Revisado: 04-13-22

I don't know a history that weaves so many strands together into a coherent narrative. One may get lost a bit among the many players, but you never have the sense the author is oversimplifying. It's a horrific tale, but it's an essential look at the death throes of colonialism, the emergence of the tension between muslim fundamentalism and nationalism, and a preview of the chasm that would open between progressives and reactionaries in the 21st century. We tend to think that chasm is bad today. This history reminds us how bad it can get.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

fun book, clearly read, falsetto is distracting.

Revisado: 03-31-22

Dufris catches the sense of the noir genre well in his narration. But his female voice characterizations don't quite work for me.

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Destination makes the journey worthwhile

Revisado: 03-31-22

I just reread this series as an older man, having first read it in my early 20s. The first two books of the series I found just as remarkable. In the others, I found that I disliked the Proust, and the society he described, far more than I did when I was young. Proust himself has an ambivalence toward the society he describes, and his own life within it, of course. When I first read the book, my own father dismissed it as "the story of a failed life." I thought then, that my father failed to appreciate the poetry in Proust's writing. Now, I think we both failed to understand Proust's ambition, which he lays out so clearly in the last few pages of this final book.

I think Proust isn't really concerned with the success or failure of his society, or our judgements of his life. I think Proust isn't especially concerned with the poetic quality of his prose, either, except in this: Proust understands that the great strength of poetry is to evoke. And what Proust is trying to do is to evoke a vanished world for us, to capture a vanished time, and to let us dwell in it for awhile, in our time. He is trying to reify, not justify, his life. It's a *remarkable* ambition for a man who accurately calls himself "dissolute".

I think he succeeds best in that ambition with the first two books. I would reccomend anyone to read them, and the second part ot this last book. Is the rest of it worth reading? Only if you have the time.

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just awful

Revisado: 09-09-21

The information is superficial. The author oversimplifies and talks down to her audience. There's an attempt to turn what should be a science book into a human interest story. But the author comes off as entitled and out of touch. Her angst when her husband wears a black coat with blue slacks is so silly that it's funny. The narrator unfortunately has this perky "mary sue" tone of voice that just reinforces the vapid writing. Save your time and money. Read Viktor Frankl or William James, who said the same things more powerfully decades ago.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

offensive and shallow

Revisado: 08-17-21

A funny idea that would have made a good 10 minute television skit for a standup comic.

As delivered, it amounts to an attempt by an academic to cash in on his credentials, with gestures toward the language of qualitative research nethodology that sound silly at first, but wind up being tedious and a little pathetic.

I have the sense he wanted to pass this off as a scholarly contribution to his administration, but also pander to a popular audience with his idea of what a not-too-bright layman would find guffaw-worthy.

If it was 90% shorter, it would have been funny, and a little thought provoking. As is, it reads like he was being paid by the word. Save your time and money.

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Never more timely

Revisado: 01-19-21

If you don't know the history of the Eugenics movement, and how it swept through academia more than 100 years ago, snaring even Karl Pearson into promoting the idea of Ubermensch, you won't find a funnier introduction to an idea that killed 100 million people than this book.
To fully understand the irony of the current wave of racism, you really need to start with that silly syphilitic Nietzsche, and work your way through Hitler and Rand to our current little titans.
Or, you could read this book. Sort of the Cliff Notes to the devolution of a stupid idea. Clear thinking about how evil people can be when their self-serving biases make them think they are doing good. With jokes.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

The most biased and shallow book in this series

Revisado: 01-17-21

A book for the moment. And the moment has passed. The danger in drawing excessively from economic research is that, like all empirical research, the findings are always open to elaboration, reinterpretation, ond falsification. Future historians may be interested in what historians of the 1990s gleaned from economic research of the 1980s (evaluating policies of the 1950s and 1960s with dubious data). General readers of the 2020s and beyond would do better to look at current economic research.

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sound editor on leave

Revisado: 10-04-20

The sound dynamics are awful. Much too loud, then you can't hear it. My least favorite of the witches books, anyway.

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