Review

Not as bad as the first few pages make it seem. Actually funny at some points, but not the best among the level 2 books.

** Guests at the Banquet of Life ** I always think there is more to the art of living than there is. Less a book than a lecture, an exhortation to use what I’ll call Epictetus’ razor as a means for approaching life: If it is under your control, focus on it, find effort and struggle, even if it means transient unpleasantness. If it is not within your control, don’t just accept it. Find ways to incorporate it as part of the plan of the universe. What struck me in this read-through is the exhortation to both let go of the past, and view life as a wondrous thing, as if we are all already on the downhill slope. ...

Wait, this isn’t by the Dalai Lama this is quoted and analysis by a psychologist. I think I’ll go elsewhere.

Animal Farm levels of allegory about life-or-death instincts deployed in the pursuit of status, the willful blindness of the wealthy toward inequality of opportunity, and the thucydides trap.

83rd book of 2020. Parenting Short Stories. Eskimos keep their babies by putting them in the same jacket that Mom is in. Want more details? Read another book, because this book doesn’t have them. If this is a ’tour of Global practices’ I think a cruiseship at port is the correct analogy. The author seems to be pulling mainly from secondary sources, with no science, little comparative analysis, and no commentary that makes the book worth reading. ...

** 84th book of 2020: Light and fluffy, not enough fruit in the center. ** One should be a PARENT: P - Play: Kids should play, it’s a means to control their own development and see how much stress they can endure. Sure, but, nothing new here. * **A - Authenticity: ** “Emotional honesty, not perfection, is what children truly need from their parents.” I like this one, and it’s a good inoculation to the faint praise that is a staple of the American attempts to promote self esteem. The author recommends reading stories that ‘encompass all emotions’, and being as honest with kids as possible about your own emotions as a helpful parenting technique. *Probably the most useful section of the book, and I appreciated the sample dialogs. Sadly there’s only one example dialog, and I’d love a discussion of when parents could be taking it too far. * ...

** 81st, 82nd books of 2020: Work = Success** China does well with standard education. In the 2018 PISA results, China Singapore, Macao, and Hong Kong scored 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th respectively. (Link (https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-results_ENGLISH.png)) In the US, Asian Americans are sufficiently overrepresented in academic pursuits such that it has become a meme in American culture. One way to describe this difference is in how we get kids to do the things they don’t want to do. In Little Soldiers, Lenora Chu is unable to get her son Rainey to eat eggs. She is astonished to discover that her Chinese preschool teachers had succeeded but horrified to learn how they did it. Every time Rainey spat out the eggs, the teachers would put eggs back in, until eventually Rainy gave up and swallowed. To our American author this was terrible: force-feeding akin to what would be found in Guantanamo. To a Chinese preschool teacher, it was standard discipline - eggs are a good source of protein and Rainy needed protein to focus during the day. ...

** 81st, 82nd books of 2020: Work = Success** China does well with standard education. In the 2018 PISA results, China Singapore, Macao, and Hong Kong scored 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th respectively. (Link (https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-results_ENGLISH.png)) In the US, Asian Americans are sufficiently overrepresented in academic pursuits such that it has become a meme in American culture. One way to describe this difference is in how we get kids to do the things they don’t want to do. In Little Soldiers, Lenora Chu is unable to get her son Rainey to eat eggs. She is astonished to discover that her Chinese preschool teachers had succeeded but horrified to learn how they did it. Every time Rainey spat out the eggs, the teachers would put eggs back in, until eventually Rainy gave up and swallowed. To our American author this was terrible: force-feeding akin to what would be found in Guantanamo. To a Chinese preschool teacher, it was standard discipline - eggs are a good source of protein and Rainy needed protein to focus during the day. ...

** 79th book of 2020: Rhythm of ‘body keeps score’, followed by the rhythm of bore. ** Too often in fantasy, the hero’s journey consumes so much available bandwidth that, that the difficulties of high stakes situations are lost in the compression algorithm of novel writing. Elements like individual trauma or coalition politics are ignored entirely , leaving readers with conversation chess robots who plan every social interaction 4 moves in advance and stare at defeat and carnage unfazed in and deftness that mere mortals cannot dream of. ...

49th book of 2020: Millenia of bad emperors Quoted as a primary source often enough to warrant a read. For a work nearly 2000 years old, it remains eminently readable, and in english translation surprisingly similar in style to more modern works like Gibbon or Keay’s history of China. I enjoyed the tone and commentary as much as or more so that the content, as Suetonius does little to create a narrative connecting different emperors and periods. Alas such mnemonic devices are a modern invention. Here’s mine: ...