Author: seanv2
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Review: Strayed’s Wild
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail Cheryl Strayed Lee Child aside, my reading tastes almost never intersect with the New York Times bestseller list, but when the best seller in question is about a completely unprepared hiker taking on the notoriously difficult Pacific Coast Trail, you know I’m going to check…
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Review: Kaplan’s Jewish Meditation
Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide Aryeh Kaplan A bit of a disappointment. I was hoping to find here a reading of Jewish spiritual life as mediation. What I found instead was a book that, in my opinion, tried to squeeze Jewish tradition into the mediation framework in order to keep Jews from turning “Jewbu” (Jewish…
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Review: Gilbert’s The Last American Man
The Last American Man Elizabeth Gilbert I was a little worried about reading this one. Gilbert is the author of the mega-best seller Eat, Pray, Love… and books like that aren’t really my jam. But a good friend, whose taste usually align with mine, got me this one as a gift so I gave it…
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Review: Macintyre’s A Spy Among Friends
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal Ben Macintyre Its surprising that, until now, there hasn’t been a really thorough, well done, book about the fascinating possibly sociopathic, definitely alcoholic Kim Philby. Philby, as we all know, was a member (perhaps leader?) of the Cambridge spy ring who while working in the…
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Review: Howley’s Thrown
Thrown Kerry Howley I loved this little book. The conceit is that it is a recounting of a philosophy grad student who becomes enraptured with the world of MMA and follows two mid-west regional athletes through their ups and downs. Howley isn’t really a philosophy doctoral candidate, but she is a talented writer. The fighters…
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Review: Levitin’s the Organized Mind
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload Daniel Levitin I’m a sucker for the books incorporating behavioral science and cognitive research in a self-help self-improvement framework. Give me the cliff notes versions of studies on how I can be more productive/focused/healthier, etc. package it up with some charts and smart writing…
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A small memory of floating in a sensory deprivation tank.
The New York Times had a short article this Sunday noting the reemergence of so called “sensory deprivation tanks” in which one floats in darkness, suspended in salt water heated to the body’s temperature. The idea is to give you the sensation of weightlessness and break from the sensory barrage of modern life. According to…
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Chtcheglov’s Formulary for a New Urbanism
Formulary for a New Urbanism is the urtext of the concept of pyschogeography. It was written by Ivan Chtcheglov under the pseudonym Gilles Ivain in 1953 when he was all of 19 years old. Chtcheglov struggled with mental health issues and was actually in a mental hospital when Formulary was first published in the first issue…
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12 Thoughts On the New York Marathon Course
This past weekend, I ran the last twenty miles of the New York Marathon course, from Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn to the finish line in Central Park. Here are thirteen things about the course. Some I remember from the last time I ran this race ten year ago and some I remembered during my run…
Milo and the Calf 