non-fiction

How To Be A Stoic

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 19:54 on 6 January 2019

Okay, anyone who knows me knows I am a big fan of Classic Stoicism, which is a far cry from Modern Stoicism which is essentially, "Grin, shut the f--- up, bear it," as best represented by the character Spock. Classic Stoicism is more about accepting reality as it is, being neither really happy nor really sad, knowing that pretty much everything but ourselves is outside of our control, recognizing fortune is fickle, and that we are all going to f'ing die so accept it already. There are elements of acceptance in Stoicism, but the acceptance is of things outside of our control, not for things inside of our control nor for things we can affect. As someone with a strong sense of fair play and a large amount of frustration with the lack of fairness in the world, I find Stoicism to be a way to endure the crappiness of being human.

Which is to say, I've been looking for a book that I can hand to people who are curious about Classic Stoicism, without suggesting they read a dozen books to gather the different parts into one cohesive unit, much as I would hand over a copy of Mindfulness in Plain English if asked for a book about mindfulness.

I think this book might be that book, that I recommend for Stoicism. Maybe. It's hard to beat Meditations and many of Seneca's works. I'll reread it at the end of the year and see if it holds up.

Yet, I do strongly recommend this book.

Although public criticism of religion (or of any idea) is the staple of a healthy democratic society, people don’t respond very well to being belittled and insulted.
Page 4

Seneca connected this test to the rest of our existence on earth: “A man cannot live well if he knows not how to die well.”
Page 7

How To Age

Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 14:51 on 3 January 2019

I would argue that this book is less a how to book on aging and more a plea for those who have not yet aged to the point of infirmary or elderly or even somewhat slowing down to be more considerate of those who are aged.

"Aged" has so many different meanings these days. Used to be old was 50, now it's when you stop living, when you give up, when the years of treating your physical and mental health for shit and said years come rumbling back on top of you. If you're still active, if you're still learning, if you move and think and moderate, then the sagging skin doesn't sag as much, the white hair doesn't matter as much, and the joys of living are larger than the accumulated pains of living.

Sadly, I don't know that I'd have been positively influenced in any meaningful way if I had read this book when young. Currently being in the middle, not young, not old, I'd have to say I see the wall of old age that I'm going to crash into, but it won't be head first. I'm going feet first with the intent of jumping off it.

Growing old means "still alive" and what a "privilege" (the book's word) that would be!

This book is worth reading, as many of the School of Life books are, I recommend it.

It sees ageing as a lifelong process, not something confined to its latter stages, and an opportunity to develop –indeed an intrinsic part of life itself.
Location 62

A long life signals that we’re privileged, either through genetic serendipity, affluence or sheer luck.
Location 64

This acknowledgement of ageing involves mourning, because there are inevitable losses associated with getting older, whether in function
Location 66

The Inevitable

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 17:17 on 29 December 2018

Rob was reading this book, so I jumped in to start reading it, too. In it, Kelly posits twelve inevitable (hence the title) technological forces / trends / changes that will shape our future. He gives them odd names, so that they are all gerunds:

Becoming: everything's upgrading, so we'll always forever be newbies
Cognifying: I suspect a made up word, basically AI everywhere, even dumb ai
Flowing: everything is real-time and instant access becomes more instanter (yes, I did make up that word)
Screening: everything becomes a screen, hate this idea
Accessing: no one owns much, so the corps own the big stuff, we just rent
Sharing: no one owns much, so the corps own the big stuff, we just rent, and share it
Filtering: everything is curated, unfortunately, likely by the AI
Remixing: everyone steals from everyone else and makes a meme out of it, or at least makes things better, pretty much humankind forever
Interacting: AR / VR
Tracking: total surveillance nominally "for the benefit of citizens and consumers" but in reality to an authoritarian state

I think Kelly started reaching on these, but there's also:

Questioning: the idea that good questions are far more valuable than good answers (except that too many people don't question, don't think)
Beginning: going global

There were parts of the book that I really wanted to scream NO NO NO at. Except Kelly isn't saying "here's what I propose," he's saying, "here's what I see." Screaming "No!" at a wall of water doesn't stop the flood, building a seawall stops the worst of it. Which might have been a reason for writing and reading this book.

Worth reading. Maybe reading twice.

Our greatest invention in the past 200 years was not a particular gadget or tool but the invention of the scientific process itself.
Location: 146

The Phenomenon

Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 17:24 on 20 December 2018

Over the years, I have bought Kris a number of baseball-related books. Some have been peripherally baseball related, sorta like the movie For the Love of the Game is a baseball movie (for the record, it is not, it is a romance movie with baseball elements, it is not a baseball movie). Some were definitely baseball related.

This one, however, is the first baseball book Kris recommended back to me.

That's right, I bought baseball books for him, but hadn't actually read them.

So, on his recommendation, I read this one.

I didn't know Ankiel's story. In a few sentences: he was a baseball phenomenon, likely to be better than Sandy Koufax, who, depending on how your stats rank your pitchers, is considered the greatest pitcher of all time. Then he threw a wild pitch that got into his head, and he couldn't get it out. He tried, he failed, he left baseball, he came back a hitter and an outfielder instead. He had a good career.

This book is his autobiography of that career. Many parts of the book read like the inner dialog of a person talking with himself, trying to psych himself up, convince himself that he can do this next thing, that the last thing wasn't so bad.

A result of the style of inner chatter writing and not knowing Ankiel's story is that I was really confused in the first two chapters. of the book. By chapter five, Ankiel had written enough of his story that I understood the why of this book, and was engrossed in the story.

Had I been paying more attention when I was reading The Art of Fielding, I would have recognized Ankiel's name before reading this book, as he is mentioned.

The Last Boy

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 19:02 on 21 November 2018

Okay, most people know who Mickey Mantle is. Most people know my opinion on baseball. And most people who know me know I'm not a fan of biographies. If you didn't know, well, it comes down to it doesn't matter how great the person was, said person was still human, and thus any honest biography is going to show us where our hero stumbled and fell, and off the pedestal they fall. Not a fan, I like my illusions, thank you very much.

And so, we have the biography of Mickey Mantle. Why did I read this book? I'm trying to clean my library hold list, and this one was available. I didn't finish it before it was due, but was able to renew, so there's that.

Mantle was a product of his father and of his time. He had the natural talent, the determination of his father for his son to succeed where he did not, the life-long training, and f'ing bad luck. I understand this last one. The first part maybe not so much.

When I mentioned I was going to read Mantle's biography to Kris, he looked at me surprised. "You know, he was a drunk, right?" I shrugged. "He was also a great," I responded. "Yeah, I met him once."

That exchange stuck with me as I read the book. Here we have someone who was great, who could have been better, and life threw him a couple curveballs he couldn't hit, and alcohol became a coping mechanism. Talk about a tale as old as human history.

So, yeah, the man was a great baseball player. He was nice. He was a drunk. He lived, he coped as best he could, he died. The story was interesting, from the perspective of someone who didn't grow up with baseball, didn't really understand it until well into her adulthood, and wanted a reasonable look at the man's life. I appreciated the biography was written by woman.

Lost Connections

Book Notes Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 18:58 on 14 November 2018

Okay, the subtitle of this book is "Uncovering The Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions," which had me intrigued when it was first mentioned in the book feed of micro.blog. I'm not going to say no to reading a theory about Depression, especially when it comes with a promise of solutions.

The book starts off with the author's tale of his depression and time on anti-depressants and how his therapist keeps telling him he still sounds depressed. He insists no, he's not, but the therapist keeps repeating he still sounds depressed. No way!

Except... way.

The author goes on and keeps having include links to his references. Some of the references were really odd, "the audio of this conversation has been confirmed by my publisher" and "so and so recalled this the same way" kind of weird. Turns out, the author had previously been caught plagarizing himself and making stuff up, so he needed to be extra cautious in his books.

So, read with a bit of caution. Sure.

Except the studies and examples and anedcotes and stories and and and yeah, some of it isn't science but some of that not-science just... feels... right... as true, as something someone depressed needs to try when they want out of the cycle and want to heal, want to be whole.

Basic premise: we have lost the connections to our values, to ourselves, to our community, to our world. Without those connections, we are lost, we lack meaning, direction, purpose. Discover, embrace, and nurture those connection and the depression can be lifted.

The Disappearing Spoon

Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 10:09 on 8 November 2018

Okay, here we go, traipsing both down memory lane AND across the periodic table. I so much enjoyed this book. It took me a while to read it, however, and I totally missed the Caltech Bookclub meetings about it. I ended up checking it out from two different libraries for a total of three checkouts, not because it wasn't interesting, but rather because I needed to just start reading it.

The book is all about the periodic table, its history and its current state. Kean gives us stories about the different parts of the table, along with the stories of the main characters in its development, including those who sidetracked along the way.

Kean discusses the various parts of the periodic table, going through the chemistry and the physics of different elements, along with the science of finding the elements and the politics of naming them.

So... much... fun.

Probably helped that a lot of it happened at Tech and at Berkeley.

If you like science, this is a good book. If you enjoy pondering the periodic table even a hundredth as much as I do (yes, I have it memorized!), I strongly recommend this book. Even if you don't even think about the periodic table much, it still makes a great book to read to the kids before bed.

The discovery of eka-aluminium, now known as gallium, raises the question of what really drives science forward — theories, which frame how people view the world, or experiments, the simplest of which can destroy elegant theories.
Page 54

Melts in your hand! Geranium doesn't!

And after such a breakthrough, Böttger reasonably expected his freedom. Unfortunately, the king decided he was now too valuable to release and locked him up under tighter security.
Page 61

Modern Loss

Book Notes kitt decided around 22:46 on 9 October 2018 to publish this:

Things have been rough as of late.

A while ago, I recognized that what I'm going through is grief, and that I have not given myself a chance to grieve the large number of losses I have had this year. I need to grieve, I need to process a large amount of non-classical loss, and let it go. One doesn't process grief on demand, no matter how much our loved ones or society want us to do so. However, having those who have also grieved, who have also had losses, guide us through the darkness that is grief, hold our hands, and tell us, "this f---ing sucks, it f---ing hurts, and maybe it'll hurt less in the future, maybe it won't, but I need you to know that you aren't the only person experiencing this loss, you have my, your, our permission to grieve," helps in unexplainable ways.

Unfortunately, this is not the book about grief that I needed. It is A book about grief. It is a series of essays from people who have been through loss and grief and have in some measure passed through the pain, who are turning around to reach back and help those just starting the journey. It is a good book about grief, in that it talks a lot about grief as experienced in modern times, about things that aren't "classically" okay to grieve about.

But, again, not the one I needed.

The book originated from a website where people could express their grief and find support. The book is an extension of that website, many of the essays taken from the content of the website. Which is fine, it's a good book if you're a grief voyeur. I am not. I did not enjoy reading about other people's pain. I was/am looking for a book on processing my grief.

Anyone who is able to relate to more than a couple of the essays in this book has had a shit hand dealt to them, and that really sucks.

Creative Quest

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 17:47 on 3 October 2018

I am unsure why I picked up this book, or where it was recommended to me. I thought it was in a group chat, but I can't find the reference, and I really do not know why I picked up this book. There are a couple books on creativity that I would have put in my reading list before this book.

Which isn't to say this book was a bad book, quite the contrary, it is a fun book to read. You totally see Questlove's personality in this book, and how much fun he is having. Life isn't all about fun, of course, but if you love your work, love what you do, the rough spots can be endured.

This book isn't anything deep, it isn't anything you haven't heard before if you're older than 22 and have been creating in any form. The book is, however, a fun read. It is a good "rah rah rah!" book. It is a good "keep it up!" book. It is a good "you got this!" book. If you're not stuck stuck, but are maybe a bit stuck, and want to distract yourself, tell yourself you're moving ahead by reading a book on creativity, this book is a good one to read.

If you're stuck stuck, shut up, stop reading, and go do the work. If you can't create, you can at least do the work.

I enjoyed reading the book, and recommend my style of reading books like this: listen to the audio book when you're walking outside, running, doing dishes, knitting, and read the actual book when you have the time to sit and read or are walking on the treadmill reading.

Be receptive. Be ready to hear your future in a parking lot behind a Pharcyde concert or at a church in England.
Page 63

This makes more sense in the context of the book, actually.

Rage Becomes Her

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 20:18 on 1 October 2018

This book was recommended in a number of book forums. Having read Women & Power recently, I put the book on hold at the library and read it when it dropped.

This was not the book I was expecting.

This is the book I needed.

This book is all about women and their anger, and how society tells us not to be angry, to suppress that rage, no one will like us, angry women are difficult, etc. etc. etc. Yes, I know you're not supposed to have three etc.'s together, that the etc. means continue this series after I have already given you three examples. ETC.

Okay, let's talk about my crying in the framework of this book. I have always been easy to tears, and not until my early twenties did I recognize that my crying was an expression of frustration of my powerlessness. After reading this book, I think I had it wrong. Yes, crying is an expression of my frustration, but it is also an expression of my anger.

I read this book and sat back and thought about all the times I've been told to shut up and sit down because I was embarrassing him, the number of times I've been told, "Oh, you have enough on your plate, you don't need to deal with this, just accept this current shitty situation *pat* *pat* *pat*," the non-zero times I had to walk away from a situation because someone else was being and ass and my calling him on it was "being difficult."