That’s not so much my problem. I’m a learning addict and get hooked easily. My problem comes down the line at the point where the once blurred edges between what is of value and what is bullshit in a given discipline comes into focus. It is that point that my enthusiasm wavers.
I suspect this meant to imply “in a good way,” but I would like to express the view that this is often not good. It’s often because the book is inaptly titled and its blurbs and tag lines deceptively written. When I first started doing reviews I used to get (and am sure I still do but these days ignore them,) “I see you liked X, this is X meets Y!” [Where “Y” is something that is incredibly popular, and “X” was a book I had reviewed positively.] The first time I was intrigued enough to check one of these out, I found a book that bore no resemblance to X, Y, or to good writing of any kind.
The moral of the story is, if someone is selling a marketing plan about how to build blurbs, elevator pitches, titles, and other marketing information that are completely detached from the real product, ignore them. It is in no way a winning strategy for selling books. Nothing good comes of trying to trick someone.
More fitness, less routine. Develop a habit for movement, a love of it, and nature will take its course. Don’t leap into punishing routines, start easy, listen your body, and you’ll get to that point incrementally — but it won’t feel like punishment.
Joyce’s Ulysses springs to mind. I do love some of the language, but — overall — reading it was a bit like getting my teeth drilled. (But I have been known to have a different perspective upon giving a book a second chance.)
There are many long works that I thought could have used an editor (e.g. Moby Dick and Atlas Shrugged,) but still I see their literary appeal.
Alfred Krupa, Bernard Sadow, and Robert Plath, men whose inventions over thirty-three years during the late twentieth-century ushered in a new epoch in human history — the era of the wheeled suitcase.
Now, the fact that we didn’t figure out putting wheels on a suitcase until the late 20th century (and that when we did it took several long-fought permutations before wheeled suitcases were worth a damn) is a chilling testimony to how quickly General Artificial Intelligence will leave our species in the dust.
You own few things and nothing owns you.
Reading and — I’m sure prior to my ability to do that — being read to.
[Note: I would define the “kid” years as those between infancy and teenage years. So, my obsession with reading was bookended by an obsession with boobies.]
My wife and I once had tea in Nagaland with men who’d been cannibals in their youth, but they weren’t anymore (and — in point of fact — probably didn’t have the teeth for solid food anymore,) so I don’t think that counts.
For the most part, I don’t think of customs as being more or less interesting, just — sometimes — unexpected. I’ve noticed that most people see cultural customs as the strange behaviors other peoples do, while their own culture’s customs are largely invisible to them (i.e. “That’s just how things are done; it really couldn’t be done any other way.”) So, I guess it’s been most interesting, having returned from living abroad for more than a dozen years, noticing just how many strange and baffling things Americans do.
The implication being that I’m not living it? I’m outraged. Desire for things to be what they aren’t is the mother of all suffering.
I don’t know about “best.” I’ve lived a lot of life. But we went to a Christmas concert in St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans this past Christmas that was a pretty awesome experience (that I can still remember.)
Tiger Riding for Beginners 