27th book of 2020: This man Fights. Grant was not destined to rise through the ranks. Had the civil war not created a dire need for somebody, (anybody!) with an officer’s training, he would have lived out his life as a struggling head of a poor family with a problem drinking and driving fast cars horses. Indeed both before and after his second run in public service, this was his life path. ...
A masterclass in equanimity. This was never meant to be a book, so I read it as series of ’notes to self’ on how to live life, and strive for happiness. Perhaps because I was rather stressed out while reading it, I appreciated the cosmic perspective and happiness based purely on our own actions, stripped away from considerations of events outside our control. I’ll read this again.
At first I thought it was a bit pretentious, but by the end I felt that Kalanithi got to the non-fiction equivalent of the hero’s journey. Death is the inevitable conclusion to all our lives, and our journey to the end is something worth contemplation. A great book to read along with Atul Gawande’s ‘Being Mortal’. Short and powerful, highly recommended.
Good summary, I feel like I haven’t missed anything after skipping out on the news for the last two years. Now I’ll continue to tune out and wait for the next book.
I thought I would have liked this book. I’m interested in the person and the era. However the frequent lapses into comparing Leonardo to other innovators, art critique, and other information kept making me lose my focus. It’s been sitting in the queue for about 4 months and I still haven’t had any motivation to get back to it. Bailing.
Refreshing. Picked up this book on a recommendation from Jason ([b:Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter|15824230|Blocked on Weibo What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter (And Why)|Jason Q. Ng|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1371519351s/15824230.jpg|21555036]), and I was not disappointed. The combination of stories from Americans and Chinese locales was jarring at first, but I think in the end made this book much more powerful. I didn’t feel like there was any theme to the book, but there was the ability to see the world through the author’s eyes, and get insight into village life on either side of the pacific. Unlike many American books on China, I felt like the author understood enough of the context to convey in a neutral manner what life was like, rather than add layers of American culture into the translation. (Such as [b:Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China|18490568|Age of Ambition Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China|Evan Osnos|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1418113377s/18490568.jpg|26174286] or [b:China Airborne|13151308|China Airborne|James M. Fallows|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333577776s/13151308.jpg|18329333])
This week, my wife tested positive for COVID. We don’t know where she got it, may as well have been outer space. I watched our internal quarantine protocols fail as COVID spread to me and our son. We are no scientists, but this thriller was happening in real life in real time. When I read Andromeda strain 20 years ago, it was a page turner until the ending taught me the definition of anticlimactic. Nothing the scientists did mattered, because the virus independently mutated to harmlessness. After two years of lockdown and fear, today’s COVID has no symptoms for me, and is less severe than the last cold that passed through our household for my wife and son. While the plot of Andromeda Strain was emotionally disappointing, it was predictively dead on. ...