Review: The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament by Bart D. Ehrman
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

This is way beyond my pay grade, so I'm not really in any position to give it a rating. It also went into much more detail than I could handle. But I did find many of the concepts fascinating, such as Docetism, and the idea that, since Jesus was divine, he wasn't really human and only ate food to make his apostles relate to him (then debunked in instances when, for example, he asked for some water because he was thirsty on the cross). Or that he had Simon of Cyrene go on the cross in his stead, since he was divine and couldn't die on the cross.


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Review: His Last Bow

His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm going to miss these Holmes stories. I just realized I finished them all. This final collection was quite good. My favorite was probably "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot". The final one was excellent as well.

After a while (especially when binging all of this books) you start to get the hang of Holmes's methods. When Holmes was deathly ill, I knew he was faking it for some reason, and so I kept trying to figure out why, although the ending still tricked me. .

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Review: The Valley of Fear

The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this thoroughly. The second half seemed odd. At first I thought it was just to pad the book and make it longer, which it might have been. But it also allowed Doyle to write about something other than Holmes, and I thought it worked very well. So much so that I might try to find some of his other, non-Sherlock, work.



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Review: The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life

The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life by Avinash K. Dixit
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed this. A very smart book.

It contains the obligatory decision tree, ultimatum game, prisoner's dilemma and nash equilibrium. But it also has much more. Even concepts like how stores offering to "match any competitor's price" could be a method of enforcing collusion pricing.

Certain terms, like the Minimax theory, Winner's curse, and discussion on the BATNA brought me back to grad school. The method of guessing the correct multiple choice answer without even knowing the question was excellent

I'm not sure how useful some of the multi-player theories are in practice, unless you're dealing with professionals. Let's face it, most people don't think through these decisions all that much, so they might decide to act "irrationally", which would mean your optimal decision isn't all that optimal (people might exchange their number for another, despite the math showing it's always a bad decision, etc.).

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Review: Pericle: L'inventore della democrazia

Pericle: L'inventore della democrazia by Claude Mossé
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Non una biografia vera e propria, bensì un libro su Atene e lo stato della democrazia in Grecia durante il V secolo A.C. Secondo me il fatto che manchi la storia della vita di Pericle vera e propria lascia un po' da desiderare, specialmente dato che, verso la fine, Mossé critica altri biografi come Plutarco e de Paux. Il tutto un po' troppo denso per me.


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Review: The Return of Sherlock Holmes

The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a way these stories are getting somewhat predictable, in that there is a set formula of having a mystery (often with the police coming to the wrong conclusion), trailing the clues, finding the culprit.

On the other hand this makes them a bit more interactive, since I can try my hand and trying to figure out who the culprit is before the great reveal. For the most part I can do so rather early on, although I'm often wrong about the whole story (which Holmes seems to deduce but we, the reader, wouldn't have been able to).

Having watched the BBC Sherlock series makes it more fun, since many episodes were taken from actual stories, but the killer turns out to be someone different. It makes me appreciate how well the series was done, since those familiar with Sherlock probably thought they knew what to expect, but then everything turned out differently.

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Review: How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is depressing to read. It is extremely interesting. I grew up in Europe, but I imagine this will be most impactful to those who grew up in the US, since it discusses many points that were glossed over or ignored in the US curriculum (namely, the US territories that are colonies in all but name, and the treatment of said territories).

It is also depressing to read for another reason. It is one of those books that show you how everything you learned in history class was wrong. I can't help wondering how, even though we always feel that history will vindicate those who were in the right, this really isn't the case. So future generations could end up having extremely contorted views of what was right and wrong in these days in ways we can't foresee.

The second half of the book was a bit weaker. His discussions about James bond and the Beatles rang a bit hollow (and didn't seem to mesh very well with the rest of his thesis).

I would have loved an attempt to foresee what the next steps would be. If the US is an empire, and all empires crumble, how and when would it happen for the US (with the understanding that it would just be an educated guess)

Having said that, it is certainly edifying.

Fun fact:
Manhattan's stoplights, in 1927, used green to mean stop and yellow for go (I think. I can't find the exact passage now).


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Review: Evening Proposal

Evening Proposal by Hye-Young Pyun
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These stories all seem to share a theme of being lost, whether physically or as in losing control over one's direction in life (or both). The atmosphere is similar for each story, and there are definitely certain themes (monotonous work, one's employment not mattering, travel, being stuck in a situation and not being able to get out, etc.) I'm sure there are parallels that I'm not catching, as well, like the life of the rabbit probably being a metaphor for the life of the protagonist.

Regardless, I enjoyed these. I wish I had spaced each story out a bit more, so I could come back to them with breaks in between. I might do that the next time I read Pyun's Hye-young's work.



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Review: The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I actually enjoyed this quite a bit. The format seemed somewhat different, having Watson as the main protagonist, with his letters to Holmes providing the bulk of the information. It seems that, by using this mechanism, Doyle places us (almost) on equal footing as Holmes in terms of the information we have, so that we are just as able to deduce who the culprit might be as Holmes is.

The description of the moors is intriguing, especially after having read a biography of the Brontës, where they seem so romantic.

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Review: Milkman

Milkman by Anna Burns
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First of all, this book did an excellent job of transporting me to the Northern Ireland of the 1970s, and the paranoia and violence surrounding everyday life.

Having said that, I'm really not sure about not using proper names. Well, they are avoided when discussing geographical locations, and this aspect worked quite well for me, making it seem more like the story took place in a random land with set rules, rather than a precise 1970s Northern Ireland.

But the entire book avoids them, even for peoples' names, preferring to use names such as "Somebody McSomebody, Milkman, The real Milkman, maybe-boyfriend", etc. I'm not exactly sure why. Possibly so as not to bias the reader against any one name. Or maybe to imply it's a real story and so as not to implicate anyone real. Or maybe I'm just missing something. Regardless, the end result seemed to be a bit unwieldy to me, with sentences like this:
"third brother would also be recognised as the brother of the sister who was sexually involved with the paramilitary player"

There were also quite a few meanderings and digressions, which for some reason felt like they detracted from the story a bit.

Aside from that, I really liked the book. It had a bit of a "sostiene Pereira" feel to it. Someone trying to be aloof of all the conspiracies, gossip and paranoia, finds that it is more and more difficult to do so. The feeling of suspicion and mistrust becomes more and more suffocating through the course of the book.

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Review: Il sospetto

Il sospetto by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interessante. Non proprio un giallo, ma un commentario sulla moralità, ecc.

Dico la verità, provavo un certo disagio a leggere le descrizioni del nano. Capisco che era scritto nel '58, e che tutti i protagonisti dell'istituto erano un po' animaleschi, ma mi sembrava un po' esagerato.



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Review: Language Families of the World

Language Families of the World by John McWhorter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think I found my new go-to to recommend for people who are interested in learning about linguistics, or languages in general (although I still love Empires of the Word). I found this book fascinating, and McWhorter extremely entertaining.

Some of my notes:
The more adults have had to learn a language throughout its history, the more simple it tends to be. The longer a language is left to itself, the more complicated it will get.

"I went to the store" said Edward
This is an awkward sentence structure that is never spoken, only written. It never was a natural manner of speaking in English, but it's a holdover from English's germanic roots. Namely, how German likes to have the verb in the second place, as in:
"Ich gehe ins kino", and
"Morgen gehe ich ins kino"
We don't have that anymore, but we have some awkward ways of using sentences because of it.


If we didn't have written Latin, many language families would be much more of a problem. For example, "cheese" in Italian is Formaggio, in French is Fromage, in Spanish is Queso, and in Portuguese is queijo, while in Romanian it is branza. So what was the root word? Btw, in Romantsch it is Cascio, while in Sicilian it is caccio. We know that in Latin it was caseus formaticum thanks to writing, but without those writings it would be almost impossible to figure out. This is the case for most language families.

Apparently Estonian has triple consonants.

Also, I've been looking for a place to learn Cherokee online now, thanks to this book (although without much luck)

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Review: Fifteen Dogs

Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An extremely original and promising premise, which, for the most part, made for a very entertaining and insightful story. Toward the end it seemed to stretch on a bit too much for me, but I'm glad I picked this book up.

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Review: The Book of Khartoum: A City in Short Fiction

The Book of Khartoum: A City in Short Fiction by Raph Cormack
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm really enjoying this series of "A City in Short Fiction". As with any collection of short stories, these are hit or miss. I imagine many were over my head, but it was all enthralling nevertheless, given this is the first collection of Sudanese stories I've ever been able to read.

My favorite stories:
The Tank
A Boy Playing with Dolls (I think?)
Passing
The story of the girl whose birds flew away (I think?)


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Review: The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I confess I read this out of guilt. Humboldt's name is one that I had heard before and thought I should probably know something about, but really didn't. Anyway, I'm very glad I picked up this book.

Humboldt was certainly a character, and probably one of the first to decide to live freely, and not be confined by states or politics, in order to discover the world. He also was pretty much the precursor to Darwin's theory of evolution.

The last section of the book seemed like a bit of a stretch, since it dealt with people who were inspired by Humboldt, and then people who were inspired by the people who were inspired by Humboldt, etc. But it was all very enlightening.

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Review: The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea

The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea by Lady Hyegyeong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's interesting how she, as the wife of a prince and mother of the king, hoped future generations of her family would not serve in court, since she saw it as fraught with trouble and badmouthing and backstabbing, and would rather they just live and work away from the royal palace.

Also, understanding these are personal memoirs, and that, as a woman, she was kept apart from the governing issues of the royal family, it still struck me how her whole life revolved around palace intrigue and politics. She claims multiple times that no one suffers as she does, not really taking into account everything going on outside the palace walls.

Regardless, an interesting read. The last book is definitely the most interesting, since it tells the story of Prince Sado's descent into madness and imprisonment in the rice chest. I'm guessing he was a paranoid-schizophrenic, although I'm not sure. Wikipedia didn't help much.

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Review: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I can't say I enjoyed this as much as the last collection of stories. They were pretty hit or miss. For example, the episode where we meet Mycroft (The Greek Interpreter) didn't even involve any deduction on Sherlock's part. Also, his "death" was a bit sudden (Moriarty is only introduced in the final short story as the best best best best criminal mastermind ever), so I see why people were upset.

The introduction by Stephen Fry (in my version) of how he got involved with the Sherlock Holmes society as a youth was probably one of the most interesting parts.

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Review: All This I Will Give to You

All This I Will Give to You by Dolores Redondo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

PROBABLE SPOILERS AHEAD:
Part drama, part mystery. But for some reason it didn't really work for me. I feel like the book was trying to do too much. It wasn't fast paced enough to be a real murder mystery, but it didn't really have enough drama to be a real drama.

Sort of annoying how Alvaro was the best of the best of the best (turns out to be a noble out of the blue, is honorable, stood up for his brother, made money for the family, was extremely knowledgable about wine growing, was the only noble who loved hanging around with non-nobility, etc. etc.), and then had dark secrets, which were obviously all a misunderstanding because he's the best of the best of the best. He just seemed a bit too cardboard cutout to me.

Can't say I liked the whole pedophile priest angle either, since I feel like it's quite played out at this point.

I realize these are all bad points. But from around 3/4 of the way through it started getting more interesting, and the ending was great (aside from the police officer's home life. The ending seemed too trite for me. I think they could have just skipped that whole part).

Oh, and I loved reading about Galicia.

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Review: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow. This book was an extremely interesting look at an extremely interesting man, shot in his prime, before he could really accomplish anything, by a deranged psycho, and then actually murdered by his doctors (mainly one, Dr. Bliss), who made mistake after mistake when caring for him. It's infuriating to think of what could have been accomplished by this man had he been given the chance.

The section about him getting picked as a nominee at the convention was out of this world. So much so that I went to Wikipedia to make sure the author wasn't making it up. He went to the convention to help someone else get elected, refused to be nominated, and still ended up winning.

Before giving his inaugural address he read every single past inaugural address ever given.

After having been shot, while he was "recovering", it was an extremely hot summer in DC, and, since he couldn't leave his room, a new device was invented to keep his room cool, which turned out to be the first air conditioner.

After his death, his wife also opened what turned out to be the first presidential library.

I'm extremely glad I read this biography, and I hope to learn more about this president. At this point I'd say he's the most underestimated president thus far (in the chronology of presidents that I'm reading).


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Review: Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero

Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero by Tyler Cowen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great book, although not as good as "Average is Over" or "The Great Stagnation".

I like the idea of how we should stop seeing companies as "people", thereby being "loyal" to them and being disappointed when they "let us down". However, he also explains how this is difficult because we, as humans, tend to anthropomorphize because we've been dealing with other humans for our entire existence, but corporations have only existed for around 100 years.

I'm not sure if I agree with his criticism of loyalty programs. I'm sure some people follow them in the manner he describes. I know plenty of people who are members of many loyalty programs, and just pick whichever suits them the most, rather than "show loyalty" to any one brand, as one would to a friend.

He also claims that Trump was elected purely with a promise of jobs. Maybe I'm too influenced by events since his election, but I feel like that wasn't his rallying cry at all (I seem to remember the wall, 'crooked hillary', badmouthing John McCain, and some other incoherent ramblings)



Some of my notes:

Corporations are:
a collection of assets
a nexus of reputations
carriers of legal and contractual responsibility
transactional efficient (and inefficient) relationships.


In terms of words, Republicans are more pro-business, but in terms of Actions, this isn't true. While Republicans pay lip service to business, they are against free trade, market solutions, immigration, outsourcing, etc.

Interesting to hear how the US, and not Switzerland, has now become a banking haven, since I remember hearing the same thing from people in Switzerland over the past couple of years.

Our tendency to anthropomorphize also gives rise to more conspiracy theories.

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Review: The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors

The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Barker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Are you trying to seduce me Mrs. Robinson?"
- Branwell Brontë, possibly(?)...

What a journey. Knowing next to nothing about the Brontes before reading this, I found this book extremely informative and interesting. It does go into very much detail. In fact, it took until page 99 for all three sisters to even be born. This book will also likely make you very mad at Mrs. Gaskell (who wrote Charlotte Bronte's first biography), since it points out all the biases and mistakes she included, and the reasons why.

I love how much detail we have of certain parts of their lives, obviously thanks to all the letters that have remained, and the author's (and others') patience in sorting them out and going through them all (apparently the author was curator and librarian of the Bronte museum, and it shows).

I loved reading about how Haworth parish refused to accept the deacon that was thrust upon them, and insisted on choosing their own.

The description of Charlotte by a classmate is interesting, especially how she had an Irish accent, despite never having set foot in Ireland (obviously she got it from her father).

It is truly fascinating to see how Charlotte and her brother took turns writing about their make-believe land and characters, and continued one set story over the years. Anne and Emily did the same, but unfortunately we don't have those writings anymore. Regardless, I had no idea.

Emily's defense of cats is excellent (coming from someone who tends to avoid cats whenever possible) (p.455)

"According to Charlotte, the distinctive quality of mediocrity is moderation, which is the antithesis of genius" (p. 489)

Charlotte's visit to a confessional (and subsequent confession) in Bruxelles is very interesting as well.

"George Smith had refused to accept any thanks for the pictures, so Charlotte had signed her letter, 'I am yours very thanklessly'" (p.766)

Also, seriously, the woman Branwell had an affair with (and drank himself to death over) was married and her name was Mrs. Robinson.

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Review: Bad Monkey

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fun mystery book. Sarcastic and Sardonic, but different, and probably coarser, than David Rosenfelt.

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