It was okay. Well-written, but the story itself wasn’t that interesting to me.
Normal Sucks by Jonathan Mooney.
Just finished the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown. I enjoyed the first 3 books, but the last 2 books were a slog that felt like they were tacked on to extend the series needlessly.
Moving on to love lives here by Amanda Jetté Knox and Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil – both on my wife’s recommendation.
I finally finished the dawn of everything. Well, except for the extensive notes. My Kindle says I’m only 66% through it.
This is one of the best books I’ve read in years. Every time i picked it up, i felt like it made me think about stuff in new ways. That’s actually why it took me so long to read The writing is quite accessible. But most books you can just consume, they don’t fight back. 
my summary of the key points
It concludes that:
The agricultural revolution wasn’t. That is, there was no revolution, people took up and out down agriculture many times over thousands of years before most people were agriculturalists
There is not a natural relationship between type of organization and the size of communities. There were tiny villages with powerful kings, and vast societies with no central authority, and whole cities organized by collections of civic groups.
Our ideas of “property” come from Rome, and are not inevitable.
A bunch of other stuff I’m sure I’m missing.
They organize their view of society looking at three basic human freedoms. The freedom to leave (and be accepted somewhere else) the freedom to say “no”, and the freedom to redefine your social relationships. And they talk about how we, modern westerners, have come to lose those freedoms that were commonplace through most of human existence.
They also look at three fundamental forms of power. Violence, knowledge (often of something obscure, like the gods or calculus), and charisma. And discuss how different early civilizations manifested one or more of these.
One thing they that underlies most of their discussion, they they never explicitly address, is that they view a lot of human history and relationships through the lens of the sacred, but never really engage in where that comes from, or why it matters to so many groups.
My biggest takeaway was that archeology has been blinded by the social environment of the archeologists. All the observations of Egyptian history, and how only the strong monarchies “count” as an organized society, when in fact the society kept being organized and prosperous (and freer) during the times between, for instance. I gather that modern archeology is coming around, actually, but the “standard stories” we are all taught in school have not
I was reminded of some fake ancient Greek art that i saw at the British museum. Today, they are obviously fake. Like, obvious to people like me, not just to art historians. Because they look like the style of art popular in Britain at the time they were made, with a few “ancient Greek” elements added on. But at the time, they were accepted and even ended up in the British museum because that current style was the water they swam in, and they just didn’t see it.
And i thought the most interesting observation was the importance of American aboriginal political philosophy on Europe, and especially the importance of one man, Lahontan in disseminating that. The book makes an excellent argument that Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other “enlightenment” thinkers were influenced by Lahontan’s lectures, both when he was in France and a book of his lectures that was popular at the time. And that is commonly believed to have been composed by it’s author, despite saying that it is taken from Lahontan. Because hey, some uneducated aboriginal couldn’t have come up with all that. Talk about erasure! Their arguments seem very strong, and i hope Lahontan gets added to “standard” narratives about the development of “Western” thought.
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Wife is currently reading This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel and wondered if Mountainhawk had read it.
Also, she’s liked some of Ajstudies reads and sometimes wants to what she’s reading when looking for something new.
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started Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis, 2nd edition by Stephen Few
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I’ve got a bunch of stuff by Stephen Few
I haven’t yet, but it’s now on the Amazon wishlist. 
OK, finished this.
Only took five months. Finished a few other books in that time, though. This book was rather fragile, so I had to take good care of it. couldn’t take it on trips or to the beach.
I might have been the first or second person to have read it.
Overall good information on the shit that happened leading up to the war, 99% of which was trying to prevent said war. Seems the USofA was created with this inevitability.
Just finished The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. Every 10 years six of the worlds most talent magicians are recruited by the Alexandria Society. It’s not ground breaking but it was enjoyable enough that feel inclined to get the 2nd book, the Atlas conundrum
If you’re a fan of magical fantasy that focuses more on the characters you may enjoy this one.
You have good taste.
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Wrote about him here:
That was before he retired. Though that may be “retired”.
The 24 hours of audiobook was intimidating, but maybe it’s closer to 16. I’ll have to consider adding it to my library queue.
Finished Adulthood Rites. It was a typical middle book of a trilogy, which for me means unsatisfactory. Here’s something that happened, skip a bunch of years, here’s another thing that sounds promising, abrupt ending.
I’ll read the final book bc I already have it, but ugh.
One of the added Literary Genres, I added, since I have some on the shelf, Self Help.
I reserve the right to remove if I don’t have any handy - other genres I will try and obtain.
Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pirsig
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Reading Debbie Macomber’s Cottage By the Sea. Idk how to do the spoiler thing, so hopefully this isn’t giving away too much.
One character to another: “You two are like characters in a romance novel.”
I desperately wanted the second character to say, “That’s because we are.” But she did not. And I am still reading. I don’t know why. Mood or something.
You have two options. Both tools are in the “cog” selection on the menu bar. Not sure if it works that well on a phone, though, as I can never highlight part of a text, which is step 1.
- Highlight text.
- Click the Cog on the menu bar.
- Click “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler”.
- ???
- Profit.
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This was actually a bit different from what I expected. I am a long-time reader of McArdle, and I have a long-time interest in many of the topics in this book (namely – failure).
I will probably write a review of this for one of the SOA newsletters.
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Wasn’t sure on GoActuary as to where to put this article but I figured the dedicated readers in this thread would appreciate it. Margaret Atwood looks great with a blow torch!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/24/handmaids-tale-burn-proof-auction/
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Started Fredrik Backman’s Anxious People.
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