One of the major changes in my life this last year has been that I’m reading a lot of books.
When I was young, I read a lot. For much of my childhood and most of my teen years I was reading about two books a day. During holidays I often read three a day or even four. Even into my twenties and early thirties, I maintained a book a day or so. I was one of those people who always carried a pocket book. Heck, I’d walk down the sidewalk, reading, the analog version of people staring at their smartphones.
Then along came the internet. A fair bit of my attention went to forums, but that didn’t slow down my book reading too much. Until I became a blogger, and somehow the internet ate my life.
A lot of that was good, especially from 03-08, but one casualty was book reading. I went down to one or two a week. I was intensely involved in political and economic issues, and paradoxically that made me hate reading books about economics and politics. I had trained myself, as a writer, to look for what people were (to my mind) wrong about, get angry about it (because it had real world consequences that were ugly), and then use that anger to write a post.
This made reading full books by people I disagreed with (almost all mainstream economists and political theorists of the time) really unpleasant.
This conditioning took a lot of time to overcome. But about a year ago I started really reading again, and today I’m up to about a book and a half a day. Buying a Kindle (yeah, Amazon, I know, but my experience with Kobo sucked) made this easy, and in general e-books are cheaper.
So I’ve been reading and reading, and I confirmed what I’d known, but put aside, that internet reading is not a substitute for reading books.
The vast majority of internet reading is too short. Even longer form articles and essays, which are becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of the internet anyway, just don’t match up to a decent book.
You don’t get enough information or argument or description. Even a five thousand word essay, which almost no one publishes on the internet anymore, and no one reads, does not allow the proper development of either the argument or the supporting facts as well as a good book. (Granted a lot of books are overgrown magazine articles, but that’s why I qualified with “good.”)
One gets pieces, on the internet, facts out of context, or arguments without all the facts. When learning about a new subject, one rarely gets all the context one needs: No essay is comprehensive enough.
Just recently, I spent a lot of time reading about the Chinese economy, and Chinese trade. I’ve kept a general eye on China for years, but I still didn’t know basic facts, like, for example, that China has the most decentralized government spending of any federal government in the world. (This is a fundamental and important fact, and explains much of why China succeeded.)
There is an idea, prevalent today, that one doesn’t really need to know things, because one can easily look them up.
This is not true if you want to understand anything, however. Your mind cannot work without facts and theories you don’t know. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know, and what you know you don’t know, you can then go study. If there’s important information you don’t know you don’t know, you can’t even take your ignorance into account.
Information outside your head can’t be used to improve your world and understanding, to make new connections, to understand more.
And disconnected facts and theories, not embedded within a fuller network of facts and theories; decontextualized, can be deeply misleading. They may make sense, but if you knew more you’d know they aren’t correct or don’t mean what you think they do. Equally you may think a theory or set of facts are bullshit, where if you knew more you’d understand whatever truth, or usefulness, they carry.
We thought the internet would be a huge boon, and in some ways it has been. But as with the research that shows that the more one uses social media the more unhappy and anxious one is, the fact of having so much information at our fingertips, while lovely, has also led to too much of it floating, almost context free, un-embedded in the networks of theory and meaning and additional facts necessary to make sense of it.
So, in general, while I think the internet has a lot to offer, I have to say that for those who want to understand the world, it should be used as little more than a reference library and news ticker; social media should mostly be avoided, with a careful calculus of whether the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, and one should spend most of one’s reading time with books, not online writing. (Er, of course, my blog is an exception. *cough*)
Books: Still better for actual understanding. And better for your happiness and your ability to concentrate as well.
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Cloud
Great post on books. I completely agree. I can always tell when someone only reads things on the internet because when a complex issue comes up they can only echo sound bytes. I am no master of rhetoric, but when I’ve read a 400-page book on something, I can at least recognize the complexity of an issue (and hopefully the biases of the author) compared to a string of tweets.
Since you are in a country that shares your native language (or at least your reading languages), I would encourage you to rediscover the joys of small used bookstores. If only so that I may live vicariously! I am aggressively trying to learn the language of my new country so that I can have access to small bookstores again. People don’t seem to understand when I tell them that they must read older books too, not just things being written right now.
I understand the convenience of ebooks. I’m reading them more here, because often the physical book would have to shipped from a ways off, adding cost and carbon. I just wish it were easier to convert kindle books to PDF, so I could print them out and hand-write notes, and circle new vocab words when I’m not reading in English. Best of luck with your renewed book journey!
someofparts
Look forward to hearing what you’ve learned about the Chinese approach to economic policy.
Herman
I use the internet to find information about books and I usually order them from my local library. If a book looks like something I really want to keep I will buy it. In my opinion the internet is useful for research but deeper reading requires books. The old-school internet was good for this but social media has made me more anti-internet in recent years for all of the reasons you point out and others I won’t get into at length but I am thinking of things like the “compare and despair” aspect of social media that seems to cause depression and anxiety among other mental health problems.
I honestly wish the internet would have stayed as it was in the early 2000s at the latest. Now with social media and smartphones it has gotten out of hand and is probably detrimental to society. Overall info tech has been a net negative for most people. It has dramatically enhanced the powers of governments and corporations for things like surveillance and neo-Taylorism in the workplace. The liberating power of these technologies has been wildly exaggerated. For every informative blog like this one there are many more junk websites pushing conspiracy theories and the like. That is not even getting into the use of the internet for recruiting people to become neo-Nazis and Islamic terrorists and the like. Plus, most people just use the internet for social media, entertainment, celebrity gossip, shopping, checking the weather, etc. Most people are not using the internet to become better informed in any serious way.
Finally, the info tech revolution has not really added much in the way of productivity growth. The period from 1945-1973 had stronger productivity growth and the fruits of that growth were more equitably distributed. Most of the big technological breakthroughs of modernity occurred between 1870 and 1970. We are facing real limits on growth now and I am not sure if we will break out of the slump. Given environmental limits maybe that is a good thing in the long run but it won’t matter much if humans are reduced to slavery by things like info tech which seems likely.
Hugh
I don’t do social media. I write far less on the net than I used to. I like the internet because it gives me access to a lot of primary source data, reports, and legal documents so I can do my own analysis and research and not depend on and/or assess gatekeeper interpretations of them. I can use the internet to create my own digital art collections often with hundreds of high quality images encompassing an artist’s whole career and do this not with just the big names but two or three tiers down. And I can use it to create my own digital library of both fiction and non-fiction although this often requires a lot of reformatting by me to make them more book-like. The kicker to both of these kinds of collections are our weird, predatory, rentier intellectual property laws which put almost everything produced in the last 90 years outside the public domain.
Ed
A major boon of the internet for me is actually podcasts. I’ve found that they are far better to listen to on my daily commute than the radio and some, like Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, provide amazing depth. Since I’m a ‘captive audience’ consuming it in digestible bites, I’m less likely to ‘set it down’ like I do books from time to time.
hidflect
It’s bad. I can’t even read articles nowadays unless they’re in the form of a listicle. I roll my eyes at the thought of actually having to plough through a paragraph to tease out the 5 things I can do to control fungal nails.
But worse is my newly developed ability to understand the entire article by reading the headline. “Brad Pitt shape-shifts to look like his every girlfriend”. Got it. Next article. “Damn, I’m getting through a lot of content today!”
It’s been 3 years since I nearly read a book. I was THAT close, I swear.
This is not satire. It’s true.
Ché Pasa
Books, yes. Internet, not so much.
We maintain a home library of printed books numbering in the thousands (guestimate 4000+), the oldest a Poetical Register of 1801, the newest a slim volume of newly published poems that came yesterday.
The current minimaliste craze assures us that when we buy a book we must dispose of one (or more) so as to perform “decluttering”, and I admit that some of the volumes filling our shelves remain unread and may never be read by one of the household, and yet most of our books are well-thumbed and returned to again and again.
One of our favorite bookstores sells new and used books side by side, and it probably has one of the most comprehensive selections of thought, science, opinion, art and fiction within a thousand miles (or more) because of it. Before they moved an inconvenient distance away we’d visit several times a month, each time hauling out half a dozen or a dozen volumes. Now we only visit maybe once every other month…
I maintain perhaps 200 volumes on the internet enabled devices, knowing as I do that they could disappear at any minute for one reason or another or no reason at all. Nevertheless, the internet provides me access to much more information and opinion (if I want it) than I could find in several lifetimes of bookstore, library, and academic crawling. This abundance can be overabundance, of course. We don’t actually need to know everything, after all! Even if we did know “everything”, nearly all of it would be of no use. Yes, utility of knowledge matters.
It’s of more than a little interest to me that our ruling elites — following the lead of the technology sector? — love to complexify everything, often to the point of non-functional and not even decorative over-complexity. It doesn’t inform, assist, or enable; it defies.
Defiance is one of the key principles of the post-modern era. Defiance and rage. Books may or may not explain it, but the internet will not overcome it.
Willy
If US military recruitments are any kind of standard, the internet sucks. It’s being claimed that recruitments are at historically low levels not because of a lack of jingoism, but a lack of ability. Fewer and fewer young adults are able to pass either the physical or mental tests which previous generations of young adults could. This decline started about the time of the rise of the internet.
Sometimes I wonder if Lincoln and Douglas could’ve been sitting in the back of the 2016 Republican debates, if their mouths wouldn’t have been agape the whole time.
Yet… while my high school class had only one valedictorian, my nieces class had twenty six.
Maybe there are books out there which can explain this further.
Mel
I’d like to know more about China. There’s no shortage of news verbiage to evaluate. What I’ve got so far are the introductory chapters in Paul Linebarger’s The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I, which describe the traditional Chinese political structures. That and all the Michael Pettis articles I haven’t read yet.
StewartM
the fact of having so much information at our fingertips, while lovely, has also led to too much of it floating almost context free, un-embedded in the networks of theory and meaning and additional facts necessary to make sense of it.
One of the most glaring examples on the internet of this is the promoted lie that “Nazis were socialists” or “Nazis were left-wingers”. Something that zilch, nada, nobody believed to be true in the context of the time. Quite the contrary, their allies and enablers were all fellow rightwingers and conservatives and everyone at that time–allies, admirers, opponents, and detractors of the Nazis, alike–understood it was a rightwing movement.
A similar example is the myth was that the 2nd Amendment was all about a personal right to own firearms; again, the focus of the historical debate over its inclusion was over how much control the Federal government should have over the militia of the states, any personal right to own firearms was scarcely mentioned.
However, it must be said, both of these myths originated not the internet, but from the rightwing publishing industry. As someone who used to frequent bookstores but haven’t in a while, I found it rather astounding that so many trees had to die for so much garbage. (This is a consequence of decades of tax cuts for rich people, giving them the ability to buy propaganda; they built their own publishing houses because their garbage couldn’t meet even the modest quality and veracity standards of general publishing houses). So the internet just provided an easy means to spread context-free information already ‘out there’ from books.
someofparts
A book that has a surprising amount of information about the history of China during WWII is a lesser-known Barbara Tuchman work, “Stilwell and the American Experience in China”. I’m looking at my own treasured copy of it as I type this. I found the book to be a real page-turner, the kind of thing that I stayed up too late reading because it was so very engrossing.
Makes me sad to hear others in this conversation talk about fine local bookstores where they live. The big chains, and the internet too I guess, have made it impossible for modest, independently owned bookstores to survive in my town. The only small stores that have survived have done so by serving niche markets – science fiction, valuable vintage first editions and a very good feminist bookstore. There is only one used bookstore, which is owned by an unpleasant little manor-born conservative who stocks uninspired titles and only remains in business thanks to an indulgent, wealthy wife.
nihil obstet
I read about two books a week when I was growing up. My household had a lot of books on the shelves, and that made it possible. I could browse around and find stuff to read. Now, I don’t particularly want many physical books in the house; I’m not going to reread most of them, and they just collect dust. I like the few good, expensive editions I have, but for the most part the pages just turn yellow and ugly. I worry, however, about children growing up today in houses that don’t have books lying around as a normal part of life.
I love the internet — what exactly was that quotation and who said it? I can find out right now! I don’t have to spend forever skimming through Bartlett’s! What was the maximum income tax in 1955? I can look it right up! I guess this kind of makes Ian’s point about facts out of context, but it’s fun and occasionally useful.
The worst effects of the internet have been to shorten my attention span and slow down my reading speed.
different clue
I like the internet for lots of little things which no one ever thought quite worth putting in a book. And even though the degradation and decay of mainstream brand-name search engines like google makes it harder to find things, it is still possible to find big bunches of stuff on the internet. And if you can read fairly fast, you can read a meaningful worthwhile amount of it.
Plus the internet allows for the existence of blogs. There are maybe a million blogs in the world. If a hundred thousand of them are pretty good, and ten thousand are very good, and a thousand are excellent, and a hundred are su-PERB . . . . there is more bloggage then the average speedy reader can ever hope to keep up with. So . . no shortages there for the moment.
About books and “books”, what sort of language will we develop to name the difference between ink-and-pigment on paper books as against digital books? For when digital books become as important to most people as book books? Will we speak of digibooks versus anabooks ( digital books versus analog books)? Will we speak of e-books versus tree-books?
Here’s what I like about treebooks. If the power goes out, you can still read a treebook by daylight or by lantern light if you have a lantern. The visual acuity of the treebook can still be greater and finer-grained than the visual acuity of the ebook. If other people want to find out whether they think that is true or not, I propose the following test. Get a treebook copy of Birds Of The World by Austin and Singer. And get an ebook copy of Birds Of The World by Austin and Singer . . . if you can even find one. And if you can, lets compare some illustrations. Find the illustration of the rufous-thighed falconet in the treebook version and in the ebook version. Count the scales on the feet and toes of the falconet as illustrated in the two versions. Which one is clearer? Now . . . find the illustration of the tawny frogmouth in each version. Count the rictal bristles around the bird’s open mouth. Which version appears to have the clearer rendering? The rendering in which the rictal bristles can actually be counted?
Mojave Wolf
VERY mixed feelings about the internet; this is what the phrase “strongly ambivalent” is for. Many things I *love* about it and find wonderful, but I cannot say I think the world is better because of it. (I can’t say for sure that it’s worse, either, but it might be and that’s a shame, because so much potential; it does so much good and bad both)(I would say the same for social media; probably a net negative thus far but it doesn’t seem it has to be that way, and I think I’ve made my personal experience a net positive).
OTOH, internet and books are direct competitors, and I read less than I used to. I also mostly use the library rather than buying now, simply because of both space and money issues.
The book most recently finished (as in, a couple of days ago) was a YA science fiction novel called “Conspiracy of Stars” by Olivia A Cole, which I very much enjoyed.
Also out from the library and on deck are a reread, “Coyote: Defiant Songdog of the West” by Francois Leydet, “Don Coyote: the good times and bad times of a much maligned American original” by Dayton Hyde and “Woman in the mists: Dian Fossey and the Mountain Gorillas of Africa” by Farley Mowat.
& seconding someofparts & Mel –look foward to any future posts on China.
nihil obstet
The internet revealed that there was a wider range of opinion than news media permitted. You could end up feeling alone and crazy if you resisted the manufactured consent of the news media. Media Whores Online was a life saver. BOP News was wonderful (thanks, Ian, for continuing to write).
The internet can be a widening of thought or a substitute for it. I worry about the uses that the security state will put it to, but so far it’s been more good than bad.
On ebooks vs. treebooks: they are convenient for different things. Kicked back in a chair with a good edition, I much much prefer a treebook. An ebook provides portability, search functions, readability as opposed to cheap paper books where the ink almost bleeds through and the print is too small.
Stirling Newberry
They ruined the internet, now they will pay.
They are some great writer that people won’t get to read. Only after the fact when they are dead will it be noticed that they were good writers.
someofparts
I think artists only get recognized after they are dead because it is easier for promoters to profiteer off of their work if the artists are not alive to object.
StewartM
Since other people are talking about the internet vs books, my random thought:
1) As others have said, the internet–for good or ill–allows a greater diversity of opinion. Blogs and personal sites are much more interesting (and often more informative) than professional media-speak and pundits. Some of it is bad, but there’s a lot of very good stuff there (and usually, the bad stuff is apparent from the get-go).
2) It’s not just “information at your fingertips”–it’s access to information, period. I used to pore through campus libraries in vain in search of information that now I can access in minutes with a few clicks.
3) Hmm, social media? Social media isn’t as interesting as it was 6-12 years ago, because of gawd-awful Facebook (the WORST social media platform; almost every other platform I looked at was better; and to this day I refuse to have a FB account). What’s more, social media is horribly used by most (my honest opinion)–they use it to connect to people they already know. What’s that all about?
Me, I used social media to connect to people I’ve never met. And I have made friends, all around the world, that I would have never known without the internet. Some of these friends I have met in real-life. A friend I have in the Middle East, for instance, was telling me about ISIS long before it hit the US headlines. I’ve learned a thing or two or three about the experiences of other countries, about the rise of Sunni radicalism in Indonesia, or the environmental disaster occurring in the Mekong, about the rigmarole of trying to get public assistance in the UK, about the residual practice of the Sami religion in Norway, about public school life in Germany, and more. If you want to know why I have more an “internationalist” perspective instead of a “nationalist” one—well, these people are now my friends.
4) what I think is bad (or bad trends) about the internet is:
a) The destruction of the internet commons (say, usenet) which I think was done at the behest of both governments and big corporations. You can shut down web servers, but you can’t shut down usenet. But you can dump garbage (spammers, flooders, etc) into it. I can’t help but feel this was deliberate. Web forums are no substitute.
b) Related to this, the decline of privacy and tracking people. While anonymous web access is not hard (if it is allowed), the web per se is fragile and we’re far from having a distributed web. (Usenet, by contrast, made it easier to read and to post with varying degrees of anonymity, from ‘casual’ to ‘very anonymous’). Anonymity is related to freedom of speech because one’s interests and opinions being known is also being vulnerable to retaliation. When people are aware of that, they shut up (witness the way people behave at work versus outside). The lack of anonymity is a great tool to enforce social conformity.
c) The rise of proprietary hardware as well as software. This should be a no-brainer, but many don’t get it. I don’t own a smartphone and will never until an open source version comes out, that is also open-hardware. It’s amazing that people knowingly walk into these traps, which are bad for so many reasons. They’re costly (I’m using a 10 year old Linux computer and it is still quite serviceable, you couldn’t say that about a Windows machine, where software bloat forces constant hardware upgrades, it’s even worse with phones and tablets). Nor can you work on them yourselves in many instances, and I refuse to buy something where I’m locked out of the hardware nor am not allowed to change software. And things you are forced to throw away long before their time is horrible for the environment too.
And ultimately, I see all this as a form of ransomware–I can use small free cloud storage as a convenience but only for stuff I wouldn’t mind seeing published in a newspaper (even though I use a zero-knowledge, encrypted host) but I am not going to just the cloud with my data to be one day held ransom unless I send a monthly bill.
Proprietary software and hardware is, in essence, potentially spyware by design out of the box. It has no place in any political system that claims to be democratic and interested in freedom.
5) As I said, there is a lot of garbage on the internet, but usually it’s misinformation already published elsewhere that gets broadcast and distributed a lot sooner. With this, there is also trolls, many of whom I think are paid, whose jobs it is to create the illusion of a majority opinion where none exists.
StewartM
Since other people are talking about the internet vs books, my random thought:
1) As others have said, the internet–for good or ill–allows a greater diversity of opinion. Blogs and personal sites are much more interesting (and often more informative) than professional media-speak and pundits. Some of it is bad, but there\’s a lot of very good stuff there (and usually, the bad stuff is apparent from the get-go).
2) It\’s not just \”information at your fingertips\”–it\’s access to information, period. I used to pore through campus libraries in vain in search of information that now I can access in minutes with a few clicks.
3) Hmm, social media? Social media isn\’t as interesting as it was 6-12 years ago, because of gawd-awful Facebook (the WORST social media platform; almost every other platform I looked at was better; and to this day I refuse to have a FB account). What\’s more, social media is horribly used by most (my honest opinion)–they use it to connect to people they already know. What\’s that all about?
Me, I used social media to connect to people I\’ve never met. And I have made friends, all around the world, that I would have never known without the internet. Some of these friends I have met in real-life. A friend I have in the Middle East, for instance, was telling me about ISIS long before it hit the US headlines. I\’ve learned a thing or two or three about the experiences of other countries, about the rise of Sunni radicalism in Indonesia, or the environmental disaster occurring in the Mekong, about the rigmarole of trying to get public assistance in the UK, about the residual practice of the Sami religion in Norway, about public school life in Germany, and more. If you want to know why I have more an \”internationalist\” perspective instead of a \”nationalist\” one—well, these people are now my friends.
4) what I think is bad (or bad trends) about the internet is:
a) The destruction of the internet commons (say, usenet) which I think was done at the behest of both governments and big corporations. You can shut down web servers, but you can\’t shut down usenet. But you can dump garbage (spammers, flooders, etc) into it. I can\’t help but feel this was deliberate. Web forums are no substitute.
b) Related to this, the decline of privacy and tracking people. While anonymous web access is not hard (if it is allowed), the web per se is fragile and we\’re far from having a distributed web. (Usenet, by contrast, made it easier to read and to post with varying degrees of anonymity, from \’casual\’ to \’very anonymous\’). Anonymity is related to freedom of speech because one\’s interests and opinions being known is also being vulnerable to retaliation. When people are aware of that, they shut up (witness the way people behave at work versus outside). The lack of anonymity is a great tool to enforce social conformity.
c) The rise of proprietary hardware as well as software. This should be a no-brainer, but many don\’t get it. I don\’t own a smartphone and will never until an open source version comes out, that is also open-hardware. It\’s amazing that people knowingly walk into these traps, which are bad for so many reasons. They\’re costly (I\’m using a 10 year old Linux computer and it is still quite serviceable, you couldn\’t say that about a Windows machine, where software bloat forces constant hardware upgrades, it\’s even worse with phones and tablets). Nor can you work on them yourselves in many instances, and I refuse to buy something where I\’m locked out of the hardware nor am not allowed to change software. And things you are forced to throw away long before their time is horrible for the environment too.
And ultimately, I see all this as a form of ransomware–I can use small free cloud storage as a convenience but only for stuff I wouldn\’t mind seeing published in a newspaper (even though I use a zero-knowledge, encrypted host) but I am not going to just the cloud with my data to be one day held ransom unless I send a monthly bill.
Proprietary software and hardware is, in essence, potentially spyware by design out of the box. It has no place in any political system that claims to be democratic and interested in freedom.
5) As I said, there is a lot of garbage on the internet, but usually it\’s misinformation already published elsewhere that gets broadcast and distributed a lot sooner. With this, there is also trolls, many of whom I think are paid, whose jobs it is to create the illusion of a majority opinion where none exists.
V
Books are tactile and the internet is no replacement for books, real books.
I find it impossible to read anything of length or depth on a tablet screen.
Today seems to be pointing towards Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451; the colony of book people exiled out of the already dead societies.
I’ve little doubt books will soon be outlawed; or so heavily censored to the same result.
It’s a wonder writers can still make a living writing books today.
someofparts
Stewart M – “Me, I used social media to connect to people I’ve never met. And I have made friends, all around the world, that I would have never known without the internet.”
How do you do that? It sounds wonderful.
Ché Pasa
Most can’t and the number of those who do is decreasing.
Traditional book publishing is vastly expensive and almost extinct. What’s left is in the hands of a few multi-nationals, and to say it’s highly selective is an understatement. Of course it always was highly selective, but it was also selecting from a much broader and deeper pool and publishing much more from that pool.
That’s one reason why holding on to books from an earlier era is important in the Ché household. You won’t find that variety, breadth and depth published today, and the internet is no substitute. Or rather it substitutes something else, whether it’s social media huffing and chatter or homogenized reinforcements of highly compartmentalized and controlled “thought.”
Various forms of self publishing have become the norm. But there are no (competent) editors any more. So much of what gets self-published suffers profoundly from the lack. There are the scam aspects of the self-publishing realm and Amazon to contend with as well.
Nevertheless, printed books are still important and necessary. Perhaps when those of us who appreciate them die off, no one will care any more, much as the “book” became a curiosity or something to burn for heat and light when various previous civilizations contracted/collapsed.
V
Ché Pasa
July 29, 2018
Before I relocated overseas; I had a pretty extensive library.
Most were older literature from everywhere, across many disciplines; science, philosophy, comparitive religions, and you name it…
I miss them, as most could be read many times over; understanding increasing with every read…
Little by little, I’ve re-stocked my modest library with care…
BlueMoose
Just curious if those of you who like to read books fall into the camp of ‘serial readers’ or ‘concurrent readers’? I tend to the concurrent method. Not sure why. Usually the books are not even related by subject.
nihil obstet
@Blue Moose
I usually have two books going — one fiction, one nonfiction. Being trivial as I am, I get through several fictions in the time I read one nonfiction.
someofparts
concurrent – something that takes a bit of focus/effort and something more recreational – at the moment for instance, Lenin on imperialism and Hunter Thompson on the Hells Angels – last week Chaos Monkeys for a silicon valley inflected romp and Ha-Joon Chang doing a bit a digestible myth-busting on capitalism
someofparts
https://www.thriftbooks.com/
Great site for restocking a library. Rock-bottom prices and no shipping costs if you spend more than $10. I use Amazon to search the book and then actually buy it at Thriftbooks. Prices are not competitive for new titles but wonderful for replacing old treasures.
Mojave Wolf
@Blue Moose — either/both, depending, no matter what exactly you meant by that.
Like Nihil, I tend to read fiction a lot faster, and if it’s a series I like, I often will devour one after another until I catch up.
But I frequently will read lots of unrelated books rather than a series, even in fiction.
I used to start multiple books simultaneously, or rather, went through a period where I did that, but mostly no. I will start one, finish, then to the next.
ponderer
Fiction mostly. Reality tends to be a let down even if moderate doses are required.
The worst thing about the internet is the signal to noise ratio. Too many trolls, too many paid trolls, too many entrenched interests with a malign agenda spreading FUD.
The best thing about the internet is that if you wade through all the crap there are jewels around that you would never see or hear about otherwise. This blog for example. Then there are communities that spring up for a while with lively debate that can challenge one to look at life in new ways. FDL was one, sorely missed. Always wish I knew what happened there..
As an aside the death of such are as sure as the (decline of) division between work-life and life-life. The more corporations embrace social media monitoring, the more people will be forced to stay away from it. Not a bad thing IMHO.
You have a lot of good articles Ian, have you considered writing/putting together a book?
metamars
“The vast majority of internet reading is too short. Even longer form articles and essays, which are becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of the internet anyway just don’t match up to a decent book.”
It’s much worse than that. I’m thinking of facebook graphic meme type posts, with 1 or 2 sentences, and NO REFERENCES. I’ve come to shy away from reposting them so readily, even if I suspect they’re correct. It’d be nice if Facebook would provide a filter to ban all such posts. It’s be even nicer is 3rd party fact checking organization could rate their truthfulness, inline. The user would pick which 3rd part organization(s) he/she trusted (as opposed to leaving it to Facebook, a laughable proposition.)
“with a careful calculus of whether the benefits outweigh the disadvantages” Thank you. I find the lack of nuance and cost benefit analysis to be a very good sign that what I’m reading is ideologically (or equally bad, financially) driven propaganda.
On a related note, I’d like to give a shout out to intelligence squared debates @ https://www.youtube.com/user/IntelligenceSquared, for conducting respectable debates.
On a second related note, I’d like to give a shout out to psychologist and polymath Jordan Peterson, who has been outspoken and articulate in deconstructing radical leftist ideological ‘arguments’, especially as embraced by humanities professors at universities. He’s big on using language precisely, not embracing ideological positions that are flatly contradicted by well-done social science research, and not lying, ever. Here’s a sample of him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPojltjv4M0
Hugh
Re FDL, my take, there was an increasingly uneasy alliance between progressives and Democratic-types. Christie and later pachacutec represented the more progressive side, and Jane the more and better Democrats side. Most of the community was progressive. Christie left for health reasons. pachacutec was marginalized and/or pushed out. Jane filled the site with ever more standard Democrats and tried to use the site to organize for Democrats, both for the party’s candidates and agenda. At the same time, she refused to use the site’s resources and community to organize at all for progressives. This led to lots of conflicts and a disconnect between liberal posters and progressive commenters. The one really good hire Jane made was Ian who did great work in the lead up and aftermath to the 2008 financial meltdown. Then Jane got sick again and she opted to close the site down. I always sort of wonder what might have happened if Jane had not chosen to undercut FDL’s progressive community at every turn.
someofparts
An interesting thumbnail history of FDL.
Jordan Peterson????? I watched the link and did not hear rigor or honesty. Speaking from a position of self-interested identification with some exceedingly bloodthirsty traditions, he wages vigorous rhetorical battle against strawmen that misrepresent the positions of his opponents egregiously. He is a flaming sexist bully and mouthpiece for feudalism and oligarchy.
metamars
Jordan Peterson’s List of Recommended Books is here: https://jordanbpeterson.com/reading-list/great-books/
In an interview, he mentioned that he’s looking to create an online university or educational program, which will allow young people to get affordable educations, and will be geared to providing an uncorrupted education, as opposed to indoctrinating (at least the humanities students) into radical leftist ideologies. A critical description is here: https://mic.com/articles/188569/jordan-peterson-is-creating-his-own-online-university-to-destroy-college-indoctrination-cults#.2WdXaT9fE
While Peterson describes himself as a “classic British liberal”, he seems to be wildly popular with conservatives. (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpGS1sm9R34 ; http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/jordan-peterson-claims-hes-no-conservative/ )
highrpm
is stephen hicks a bit extreme like peterson?
metamars
@ someofparts
Ha! The interviewer here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6H2HmKDbZA&t=3s) says that “I don’t think that it’s a stretch to say that you (Peterson) are both the most loved and loathed public intellectual in the Western world at the moment”. You are a candidate for the “loathe” category.
Peterson doesn’t shy away from hostile interviews and debates. If you’re at all open minded, you may want to watch some of these.
You may also want to read what Dr. Denis Rancourt, a successful but controversial and principled lefty Canadian physicist who had his tenure revoked, had to say about Peterson. From https://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2018/06/jordan-peterson-and-threat-of-working.html
‘SUMMARY: Why the industry of glib and vehement mainstream character assassinations of clinical and research psychologist Jordan Peterson? My examination of Peterson’s “Rule 1: Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back” suggests that it is a seminal work anchored in a prestigious body of scientific research that should form the theoretical basis of social science in the coming years. Peterson is simply presenting this nascent scientific paradigm of the primacy of dominance hierarchy directly to the people, without an institutional filter, and using it in a cognitive therapy approach to solve the self-image catastrophe that white males in particular are experiencing. There is no valid basis for the attacks against Peterson, which are motivated by establishment machinations.
….
In the presentations, I find clear and intelligent statements on the questions related to his many areas of expertise, and ya, some exaggerations and incorrect statements in areas where his gaze has not been objective, it appears.
…..
In my evaluation, however, Peterson’s occasional stupid summaries are entirely a result of his boldness to put ideas out there, on the fly, in his broad and continuous interactions with the world; and they remove nothing from the depth and rigour of his other written and spoken words. Even Einstein wrote naïve and silly things without the prerequisite background study: “Why Socialism?”, 1949.
…..
What the ignorant hit men against Peterson have failed to recognize is that Peterson has summarized the greatest scientific advances of the last few decades, which have immediate relevance to human anthropological consciousness—not to mention representing a direct threat to the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry.2
Peterson is doing this as part of a state-of-the-art cognitive therapy guide or companion.
How can his glib critics be oblivious to this? Simple: Their place and the place of their bosses within the dominance hierarchy are threatened. “
someofparts
https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/is-jordan-peterson-the-stupid-mans-smart-person/
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/jordan-peterson-12-rules-kate-manne-review/
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve
I grew up in the Jim Crow South. My dad was a wonderful man. I saw what it cost him to be a decent person trying to work and feed his children in a viciously racist and sexist community.
How could you not see the massive errors just in that first video? We are awash in amazing prosperity and are not sufficiently grateful? Patriarchy doesn’t exist?
Tell you what, let’s post some links about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I bet you don’t believe in it, do you? Well, that just shows that you are not open-minded. I’ll post some links that show that the Spaghetti Monster is real and, if you are not petty and close-minded you will read them, right?
someofparts
So the fact that Peterson’s public remarks are riddled with sophomoric errors does not invalidate his thinking? Really? Well, I’ve been reading Ian’s posts for years. He is always insightful and intelligent without fail. Is that benchmark too hard for your hero? Also, comparing Peterson’s drivel to Einstein? So if you flatter yourself enough someone will fall for it?
So – ha! – I’m in the “loathe” category and … what? What does that prove? Neener neener you got the attention of someone who would not take you seriously under ordinary circumstances? Pathetic.
Look, I get it. If you can’t disqualify the majority of your peers from even having a fighting chance, you can’t win, can you? So if you can just oblige everyone else to slide back to the good old days of peak bigotry, birthright neanderthals will thrive again. That is the philosophy and practice of bullies from way back. You would rather be a lobster than a human if you could be the top lobster. That is exactly the thinking that has made the American South such a beacon of intellectual excellence all of these years.
someofparts
To return to the actual topic of Ian’s post, I spotted this for everyone’s amusement.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44981013
“Tsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them”
and of course, there is a Japanese term for it – charming
Peter
I’m reading a first edition of Goodrich’s A Short History of the Chinese People, published in ’43. Amazon thinks this is an important book and are selling a PB reprinting for $36.
The internet is a very useful tool for gathering information but users must still be able to separate fact from fiction and opinions from the truth. I was fortunate to be involved in the short free-for-all era of blogs like FDL until the gatekeepers moved to limit free speech that threatened their agendas.
Ché Pasa
Slightly before reading physical books became so declassé it was fashionable among some people of wealth and style to turn books that they’d read spine to the wall. Bit by bit, title-less pages would fill the shelves, and it was considered good.
Then the style evolved. All books were turned spine to the wall so no titles were visible; a statement: “I have read every book in my library — or none of them. Ha ha! No one will ever know!”
Styles continued to evolve. Some books were given colorful — title-less, of course — book covers, and shelves were filled with ombré shadings from rust to gold or whatever was appealing at the moment. Making the covers was considered a worthy craft project for people with far too much time on their hands, but no time for reading.
Then it was considered silly to hide the titles of books, so they were once again shelved spine-out, but arranged by color so that you could see the titles while also having ombré shadings. A two-fer.
Lastly, of course, was to remove all but maybe two or three books from the shelves, recycling, donating, or utilizing the pages of discarded books for arts and craft projects.
Ultimately, the shelves themselves must go…
metamars
@someofparts
I looked at your first link. Here’s a real pearl:
“Western civilization is, after all, a delicate thing. Today you agree to call Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston “Audrey Hepburn,” tomorrow we’re all fighting over water and gasoline in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.”
I don’t mind a little sarcasm, here and there, but for anybody whose listened to Peterson’s entire book, “12 Rules”, as I did, knowing how much of it dealt with the lessons learned from reading Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago”, it’s obvious that the author isn’t a serious critic. Not in this piece, anyway.
Are your other 3 links of similar seriousness? If so, there’s no good reason for me to read them.
“I grew up in the Jim Crow South. My dad was a wonderful man. I saw what it cost him to be a decent person trying to work and feed his children in a viciously racist and sexist community.”
And? Larry Elder’s father grew up in Jim Crow South, and while it scarred him and, unfortunately, indirectly, Larry Elder, they both dealt positively with the suffering (though not ideally, in the case of the elder Elder) they endured (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oww-4wdrvgI). If you can find any articles by Elder with a substantial critique of Peterson, that would interest me. (I spent a few minutes googling, couldn’t find anything, postive or negative.) Being mildly familiar with both Elder and, very recently, Peterson, I expect that Elder would be appreciative of Peterson. Certainly, Elder is keenly aware of racism – overt and sugar-coated. And yet, doesn’t believe it’s a major issue, at least compared to other issues besetting blacks. (See, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgK4HaYi3zg ).
For similar reasons, I’d be interested in any critiques of Peterson by Thomas Sowell.
metamars
“Look, I get it.” Apparently not.
“You would rather be a lobster than a human if you could be the top lobster.” This IS kind of funny, though I don’t think you intended it as such. For the record, I rather like being a human, lobster-like serotonin neurotransmitter functionality, and all. And in keeping with with my new-found appreciation of my lobster-like neurological functions, I have made a major alteration of my lifestyle. I omit the details.
“That is exactly the thinking that has made the American South such a beacon of intellectual excellence all of these years.” I’m a Yankee bord and bred (NJ), but lived 3 separate times in TX. I don’t appreciate the facile smears of southerners, or flyover country, in general, by the hipper bi-coastal liberals. Or wherever they’re from.
Peterson, true to his psychological roots, does comment on psychological factors pre-disposing individuals to be either conservative or liberal. (He, personally, scores high on “openness” which predisposes him to liberalness.) I suggest that you first learn about psychological correlations to political stances, then try to think unemotionally about Peterson’s arguments, keeping in mind his advice about repeating an opponent’s arguments back to them, and then listening to their evaluation as to how well you’ve understood them.
Peterson is not available for such an in depth discussion, and neither am I. However, Peterson has praised his own youtube commentariat, so if you want a serious exchange, you could try that route.
Willy
Jordan Peterson.
As a kid I experimented with authors like Carlos Castaneda and L.Ron Hubbard. I’d make it past the common-sense wisdom parts in the first chapters, but when things got progressively goofy I’d finally get pissed off and huck the book under the bed. Instead of some grand unified epiphany spectacular I’d been hoping for, I felt suckered.
For some reason I get the same vibe from Jordan Peterson. If I didn’t know better I’d think he patronizes fans of places like Fox and Friends and PragerU for the business potential he might not find elsewhere.
He tried at Joe Rogan’s place (the lowbrow MMA comedian guy) and got his ass pinned to submission. He apparently got himself stuck in the place between the “deadly leftist position of equality of outcome”, and being “not in favor of unbridled hierarchies”, without any kind of well-reasoned solution. We do it here all the time, but at least everybody knows it’s a big discussion with best fit solutions in there somewhere. Jordan (PhD) appeared to have not even gotten to first base.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLoDX1HheFY
I don’t think Rogan even graduated from college.
V
I don’t think Rogan even graduated from college.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wow, now that is some kind of ignorant.
In todays world, that is a badge of honor; not to have a degree.
Obviously you have no idea what an education consists of; and college/university have absolutely nothing to do with a genuine education.
The Greeks knew what an education was, as did pre 1853 U.S.; before forced education became the norm.
Check out Admiral Farragut; George Washington; Lincoln; Ben Franklin, and oh, so many others.
Read John Taylor Gatto’s; The Underground History of American Education!
Then you’ll have some idea about which to speak…
Hugh
“Forced education” i.e. public education is for we the many. Restrict it to the elites and you simply fortify the class system and accentuate the class divide.
metamars
@Willy
“If I didn’t know better I’d think he patronizes fans of places like Fox and Friends and PragerU for the business potential he might not find elsewhere.” I saw him on Gutfeld’s Fox show, and it was disappointing. Well, Gutfeld is basically an entertainer, so maybe I shouldn’t have expected much. But it did seem like he was holding back, though I’m not sure why.
He seems to really shine when he’s challenged, and his ability to compose his thoughts on the fly and then make articulate arguments is impressive.
V
Hugh
August 1, 2018
“Forced education” i.e. public education is for we the many. Restrict it to the elites and you simply fortify the class system and accentuate the class divide.
Utter rubbish.
Forced education is, and always has been; about teaching obedience. Forced education is based on the Hindu system; teaching docility.
The Prussian school picked up on that and is the ultimate basis for the American system of forced education.
Forced is accurate, because it’s the law of the land. Go to school or be a truant.
Just try and home school your kids; can you? Sure, after complying with strict guide lines; which discourages many parents.
Basically, you do not know what you’re talking about.
Read the book!
Willy
You’ve overreacting V. The point was that common sense is what it is with or without a college degree. It’s quite likely that stanch fans of Peterson would have completely ignored him if came on Fox and Friends as a journeyman garbage truck driver, instead of being a college professor / psychologist.
Willy
If Peterson was intimidated by all the tattoos and muscles, well, that would kinda suck.
If Peterson is encouraging civil debate over where the setpoint for rule of law should be to best foster a culture where more of us has a real chance, my hat’s off to him.
If Peterson is a charlatan looking to take advantage of our current sad political predicament, I’ll do what I can to expose him.
If Peterson is just selling his brand by rationalizing our current capitalistic failure which has obviously been caused by the super wealthy/powerful, I’ll fight him.
To start, he needs to quit calling progressive activism nihilism at conservative political entertainment sites.
Ché Pasa
Re: Peterson
Ah, the Academic Dissident!
I’m so old, I remember when academe was being ritually purged of “dissent” — ie: Communists and Fellow Travelers — and political speech and study outside the strict parameters of Received Wisdom was forbidden or highly controlled. Those were the days!
And here comes this mook, blithely calling for a return to those happy days of yesteryear when all was right with the world in every way imaginable, the way it was supposed to be, Divinely ordained no doubt.
Must burn out Marxist Post-Modernism with fiery flame!
Jebus.
There’s a Chair in Dissidence at every serious institution of higher learning. Funded by some fascist billionaire or other. They rail against the “left” because it’s their job. Somebody has to do it, right? But it’s always struck me as phony. A “job.” Sinecure. Partially making up for the suppression of dissent — and not just political dissent — back in the day.
Ché Pasa
Peterson even refers to what is as “the best of all possible worlds.” Who could argue with that?
different clue
Well . . . I just went to the ” Ian Welsh images” search-entry and found Mustapha Kemal’s picture still right there, right in the second row of images.
You sure can’t do THAT with a book.
Hugh
What’s up with this inane libertarian attack on public education? We are supposed to ditch an admittedly underfunded system which still manages to give basic education to hundreds of millions for the benefit of a couple of auto-didacts? Why? Never heard of home-schooling? Note too that all of the examples are from more than a 150 years ago. How timely.
Mojave Wolf
Re: Peterson — The subject of Peterson is more interesting than Peterson-the-person. I’m definitely in the someofparts “loathe him” camp, as he strikes me as a sexist-at-best, misogynist-at-worst warped-evpsych-advocate, among other things. That said, he owes his entire prominence, fame and fortune to a situation where he was, as far as I can tell, entirely in the right, back in ?2016? or so when a bunch of complete embarrassments to the left wanted him fired for refusing to go along w/the school’s asinine pronouns policy, which apparently made them feel unsafe to be on the same campus with his highly dangerous and violent insistence on saying what he actually thought about various subjects and referring to people as “he” and “she”.
i.e. I agree w/him about free speech, albeit probably not much else (I haven’t watched/read most of his stuff, as what I have watched read as convinced me there are better uses of my time).
Anyway, for positive or negative, you can thank all the glitter throwing (literally!) “no one who disagrees with us should be allowed to speak” campus crazies who hated Peterson’s guts for catapulting him to fame and fortune, though they I think they did succeed in getting him thrown off campus. (?)(my memory is kinda vague on the details of what eventually happened)
I did click on the recommended book link metamars gave us and it’s better than I expected with some interesting surprises, such as Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Wonder if that’s from his appearance on Joe Rogan’s show?
Re: Joe Rogan — Much more favorably inclined towards him. His background isn’t necessarily what you’d expect from a political podcast host. Started out as a TKD black belt and kickboxer, switched to “professional stand up comedian” because he saw a lot of older boxers and kickboxers having cognitive issues, added BJJ practitioner to the resume after watching the early UFCs, hosted some imo unwatchable TV show called “Fear Factor” before becoming arguably the best MMA commentator/interviewer around.
None of which gave me any inclination to watch his podcast until I randomly clicked on something on YouTube one day, can’t remember what, thought “wow, this is interesting and he’s really good at this and seems like a mostly cool guy” and he’s wound up being the only podcast host I somewhat frequently watch, though I tend to only watch snippets (3 hours a day podcasts are waaaay too much for me).
He is one of the most knowledgeable people on combat sports and martial arts you will find, and when he has a good guest on they tend to have great conversations. I think the first time I watched him at any length was when he had Rupert Sheldrake on, now that I think about it. Followed by a discussion of Fallon Fox that I entirely agreed with, though he took a lot of flack for it. Definitely don’t agree w/him on lots of things, but I simply don’t watch when he’s annoying me. Very interesting discussions of spiritual issues and hallucinogenics on a semi-regular basis. (I’ve never deliberately taken a hallucinogen but have always been curious, combined with one accidental at first interesting for a few hours then godawful rest of night-that-seemed-like-days which has both increased my curiosity and and kept me from deliberately trying, well, that and soon after started work which requires random testing so haven’t touched anything for a long while. But now I can watch all sorts of very long discussions about DMT and live vicariously!)
Mojave Wolf
just testing to see if everything is going into moderation suddenly, since I can’t figure out why my last one is. Did everything suddenly get heated?
V
Hugh
August 1, 2018
“What’s up with this inane libertarian attack on public education? We are supposed to ditch an admittedly underfunded system which still manages to give basic education to hundreds of millions for the benefit of a couple of auto-didacts? ”
How jejune; a non answer.
Willy
Maybe he’s preparing us for the time when it’s mostly log cabins and bibles again?
I taught myself how to read. It was hard at first, since all I had was a phone book. I’d ask them what their name was, but people kept thinking I was a prank caller.
Do you foresee telephones in this new libertarian world order?
V
Do you foresee telephones in this new libertarian world order?
I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.
The name calling is just hilarious; is it meant as a cover for ignorance?
Willy
Alright, here’s a quote from somebody talking up Mr Gatto’s ideas:
“The captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately.”
Fair enough. The military would have a harder time with recruiting, let alone trying to conform the home-schooled kid who thinks for himself. Maybe it really would it be a more peaceful, respectful world. And maybe corporations would have enough of a critical mass of free thinking employees to where those organizations would be forced to be more peaceful and respectful.
Or not. I’ve had neighbors who would’ve taught their children the criminal arts had they home schooled.
I know a mother of four who home schools her own until they go to public high school. Her temperamentally outgoing optimistic kid is doing well with his transition. But the introverted pessimist is not (though he reads a lot). She’s a solid mother. But you’d think that properly trained, vetted and funded professionals working with adequate resources and… with that mother, would be far more capable than that mother going it alone with a handbook.
You’re the expert. Entice me into reading more about this Gatto. I never had the temperament to read things just because some teacher (or parent) told me I was being ignorant. The book has to have the potential of making good sense. Or it just gets hucked under the bed.
V
Willy
I’m not invested in enticing you to do anything. And ignorance doesn’t mean stupid; just lacking knowledge.
Gatto’s book is a history lesson whose subject is public education in the U.S. and frankly; I could relate to the incredibly inept, bankrupt, system he so correctly documents.
I honestly can’t think of anything I learned from the boring and rigid, so called educational system. They could never shut me up or keep me compliant; as my life wasted away in forced education.
Critical thinking is obviously missing from most Usians; a dangerously missing critically important skill.
But, when a system kills curiosity from the first year, then one gets a society such as exists in the U.S..
I’m a history maven; possibly you are not; your move.
V
Here is a link to a free audio version of The Undergroung History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto;
http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/Category:Audiobooks
V
Willy
By the way; I do not claim to be an expert in this; only to be knowledgeable…
steeleweed
@V: There are a lot of quality writers who can’t make a living at writing. Someone once noted that more or less 90 cents of every publishing dollar went to established writers – Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, etc (regardless of the quality, they sell well), 9 cents went to books by (ghostwritten) or about some celebrity or an ‘instant book’ about some in-the-news issue. The other penny is split between all the other writers out there.
Publishing houses were gatekeepers. Some had editors supporting quality writers but now it’s all about profit. Small presses are much like POD – they have a marketing problem. The Book Club was an attempt to get good writing in the hands of readers, but that has also fallen to the profit monster. I would love to see something replace Book Club.
Sean Paul Kelley at the old Agonist used to post a yearly ‘What I’m reading” that generated a lot of interest and response. We need more of that. My own reading is mostly re-reads of 50 years of collecting, with probably 10-15 new books each year. I tend to have 2 or 3 in-progress at any given time, using them as a vacation form the Internet. And while I recognize the advantages of ebooks, I hate reading on them. I read faster and with more understading with paper.
Willy
Because of my own past, my opinions will be quite biased. I had a great time in public grade school where skilled and caring teachers made all the difference. That situation could’ve been sheer luck, but from my distant adult perspective that principle had been outstanding.
After we moved to a distant city my parents had far more influence over my life. It was a nearly complete fail. Under their inept guidance I was a mediocre student through college. It wasn’t until well into adulthood, after much painful school of hard knocks, that I recovered from that influence. And they had meant well.
Children are best left in the hands of people who know what they’re doing.
My sister had better results. But she is one of the fortunate few who never had to work. Their family oriented church and highly rated suburban public school helped create results for her children similar to what I’d had early in life. Yet… as young adults two of them are highly partisan tribalists who prefer faith-based reasoning over rational thought. They’ll even blame thinking contrary to their own indoctrination on evil spirits, especially when they’ve been outwitted. Nepotism is perfectly okay with them, yet it is only ‘The Other” who is usually corrupt. I’d say they’re ripe targets for agents from Russian troll farms and nutty conspiracy theories. IMO, public school didn’t cause those kinds of habits. So there’s that.
A guy like me would try to find what’s rationally useful from Gatto, and discard the rest.
someofparts
Years ago a friend told me about playing Zappa for a woman he was dating who was a firebrand feminist. He said he warned her that she would probably not like it. Instead, the moment she heard it she laughed so hard she almost fell off the sofa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsT865hxpag
someofparts
wrong video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpdvfTlKjP8
someofparts
Can’t go wrong with the classics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dY4WlxO6i0
V
steeleweed
I understand and agree.
I remember SPK well; the Agonist had a nasty ending which it didn’t deserve…
I’ve written 2 books and couldn’t find any publishers; published the first book myself.
Recovered 98% of expenses which I consider a success. 😉
The second book remains unpublished for now.
Haris Paspallis
Ben Hecht said “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
The same applies, I presume, if you replace ‘newspapers’ with websites/social media etc’