Category: Books
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Review: Itzler’s Living with a Seal
Living with a Seal: 30 Days of Training with the Toughest Man On The Planet Jesse Itzler Fun. Rich New Yorker hires famed navy seal and ultra-endurance athlete David Goggins to come live with him for a month and train him. Goggins agrees with the condition that Itzler agrees to follow his every instruction, no…
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Review: Diana Nyad’s Find a Way
Find a Way Diana Nyad Diana Nyad’s moving memoir of her life as a woman, a lesbian, a world record holding endurance swimmer, and a survivor of child sexual abuse. The book was significantly better than I expected. I figured I’d be reading about Nyad’s legendary marathon swim around Manhattan and her decades long quest…
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Euripides The Trojan Women and Other Plays
The Trojan Women and Other Plays Euripides The final ancient source I read for the Trojan War reading project I’m working on this year, this collects Euripides works The Trojan Women, Hecuba, and Andromache. Strangely, I’d never read any of these before. That’s what you get with a public education. The obvious point to make…
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Greece Over Rome: My Thoughts on Being Underwhelmed by the Aeneid
The Aeneid Virgil (Trans Fagles) In most things of the mind, Greece beats Rome. The Greeks philosophy is better, as are its dramas, and it epic poetry. While the Aeneid is perhaps the best piece of epic poetry Rome has to offer, Virgil was no Homer and this is no Iliad. That Homer’s superiority to…
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A Magical Adventure for Some; a Tale of Return and Venegence for Others: Homer’s The Odyssey
The Odyssey Homer (trans. Robert Fagles) The story of the heroes return from the war. The story of a son in search of his father. The story of a woman using her guile to ward off her suitors and wait for the return of her love. The story of a man through intelligence and strength,…
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I have No Taste: Thoughts on My Less Than Authoritative Book Reviews
There’s something ridiculous about these books reviews. They’re short, for one, and rarely contain any original insights. Indeed, for many of them (especially those dealing with classic works), they tell you next to nothing. My goals in writing them are, first, to force myself to articulate at least some thoughts about the books, even if…
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A Foundational Text of our Fucked Up World — My Quick Thoughts on Homer’s the Iliad
The Iliad Homer (trans. Fagles) It’s hard to believe that the first time I read the Iliad, I didn’t enjoy. I was in my youth more of an Odyssey guy. That seems insane now. Sure, the first time was in undergrad reading under deadline. It was also the Lattimore edition, well loved by many, but…
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Review: Harris’s Ten Percent Happier
10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works–A True Story Dan Harris This one is on one hand a pretty no-nonsense introduction to “mindfulness” practice and on the other a slightly annoying memoir from a television anchor. I find it a…
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Book Review: Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind
The story of John Nash, the brilliant mathematician who solved a number of interesting problems in game theory, descended into madness haunting the corridors of Princeton for years, and then, incredibly, regained a level of sanity and was awarded the goddamn Nobel Prize. It’s a hell of a story. And it raises a number of…
Milo and the Calf 