There are probably some new folks joining us here on Shifter. After my announcement about leaving YouTube, I mentioned I was transitioning back to life on my own little island. For those new to this channel, just know I typically publish a short brief regarding the books I read. Some, not all. For the past few years, and since I deleted social media, I typically average between fifty and eighty books a year. Reading book length material helped me redesign my brain from a short-form consumption device to a long-from consumption device. If you read about neuroscience, you will know this is a very doable thing even though it sounds somewhat impossible. Turns out, the brain is waiting to be told how to change.
These five are from the past two weeks and represent part of the range of what I like to read. We have a hilarious yet terrifying look at the end of the world. We have a New Mexico based bird memoir. A novella that cuts to the heart of human relations, and a book about people who study potential disasters (Black Swans) to better prepare for profiting from them. And we have a fiction book about what happens when the rules of society as cast aside when a country loses control of Democracy. This last book won the Booker Prize if you are interested in that sort of thing.
Reading mostly takes place around sunrise. I get up to read but watching sunrise is something I will never take for granted, so most days I’m there, waiting with coffee and book. Reading at sunrise is as much about what I’m NOT doing as it is about what I am. Specifically, what I’m NOT doing is looking at my phone or any other screen for that matter. What you do it your business. Not my concern, unless you want my opinion or advice. If you do want my advice then I would say “Do as I do.” The screen will be there later in the morning, trust me, and your brain will thank you. Heck, your friends and family might too. There is not a bad book in this lot. Enjoyed them all.
Comments 8
Great to see your book reviews appear again!
As far as returning to reading, I can say the first two weeks are the hardest. You should lock your phone up at the farthest spot away from where you’re sitting. After the initial—kinda painful—stage, you will find yourself easily absorbed in your books and your brain will be in a happy flow state. I am here, brothers, sisters and theys, to testify for the pleasures of long reads and the strange, pleasurable, physical sensation of your brain shifting from a pinwheel to a laser.
Author
I love reading so much. I can’t imagine NOT doing it. I’m at the point when I’m somewhere where people are jazzed about a restaurnant or club or whatever, I find myself saying “I’d rather be reading.”
thanks for the recommendations. I stugle to get 10 book a year in. The last one I will see if there is a translation available for my dad that would be a great read.
all the best
frank
Author
The bird book was fun, and poignant for me because she lives here.
Every Tuesday evening after work I usually sit down in front of the TV and watch a Premier League football show by an ex-player on YouTube. If I’m not careful that could end up turning into a rabbit hole binge. So for a change I watched An Autumn Afternoon (in Japanese with Japanese subtitles). I knew even before starting it that it’d do me and my brain the world of good. I watched Onoda (about the soldier left behind in the Philippines) the night before as well.
I’d brush up on visual aesthetics, storyline and plot, my Japanese ability, culture… so much more than frickin’ YouTube listening to someone talk about PL games that I have zero influence over.
Author
Oh, now I know what to get you for Christmas. A HUGE, oversized jersey of the best player to ever walk the face of the Earth. Diego Forlan. Proof there is a God. YouTube is perhaps the most advanced rabbit hole of all time.
Need to read the book from Peter Zeihan! Thanks for the suggestion.
Tyranny always comes in the form of protection and safety and modern democracies have been taken by that mentality, just like Saturn devouring his own children, democracies worldwide are devouring the citizens, it is not longer a synonym of stability and peace.
In the French Revolution, the committee that killed thousands in 2 months, was called Committee of Public Safety. There was no democracy, but there was people. As a catholic, this totally resonates on the beautiful definition of Original Sin. Some theology context https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSF3OQ35Wu8
The form of government does not matter, what matters is the composition of society, which is a sum of all families, which are a sum of individuals, that are a sum of passions, ideas, limitations, frustrations, etc.
Author
I’m not even sure you could call them Democracies. At least in the US. I’m not sure what it is really. But I’ll take it over authoritarianism.