Reading

Fooled by Randomness taught me some very important things about risk and randomness, primarily in the market. We humans seem to have a very poor ability to intuit probability in everyday life. Often, we attribute skill to simple luck, and we hyperanalyze small events that are truly just noise. Nassim Nicholas Taleb criticizes the naivete of those who think this way, those who don’t appreciate randomness.

Taleb uses a very conversational, anecdotal style to get his point across. His anecdotes are clear and memorable, helping me grasp his ideas. However, I think his style is too conversational. Often, he forgets to spell out his ideas concretely, leaving me with only a half-understanding. Many of his arguments seemed to be self-serving and were left unjustified. I will concede, however, that in his preface, Taleb warns readers that this work is not to be read as science. It should rather be read as entertainment, food for thought.

Given that outlook, this book did its job. It got me thinking about hidden biases and misconceptions I carry with me in my judgments of everyday events, reassessing the role that randomness has in all of it. I was entertained by his stories of his hotshot neighbor, references to philosophy and ancient mythology, and high praise of dentists.

This was just the first part of my five-volume set of Taleb’s works, called Incerto. I’m excited to tackle the rest down the road. Next up, more fiction.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a very interesting story: what happens to a man who is utterly, debatably to a nonsensical degree, honest? A man who is aloof, both from his own emotions and from the world in front of him. The story of Arthur Meursault exposes some of the absurdity of life. His trial, in particular, is a poignant display of society’s departure from reason: rarely does he even speak in his own trial, and he is sent to the guillotine merely for not weeping at his mother’s funeral. Here, we see the judges, the lawyers, and the jury clinging so vehemently to abstract ideals like justice, sentimentality, and decorum, yet they forget to be rational. Yet, while what I am saying may lead you to think of this story as Kafkaesque, I would argue that it is not. This story is human, it is real. There are no magically disappearing doors and enigmatic authorities claiming one thing on one day and another completely different thing the next.

My critique, however, is not with the writing of this novel (I loved Camus’ style, and I give this work high praise in terms of literary prowess). Rather, I completely disagree with Camus’ message, that is, that life is meaningless and there is no God. The Stranger is the epitome of atheist existentialism, a philosophy which I believe is faulty to its core. While I was deeply intellectually stimulated and entertained by this book, I was not convinced by its conclusion.

I cannot help but compare this to 1984. The two are similar, and I can see that Orwell drew inspiration from this novel. Yet, they are very different at their core. Brave New World asks us what true happiness is. If society deems it civil and moral, is a life of indulgence, vice, and pleasure better than one of faith, virtue, and delayed gratification? This is a great question to ponder in today’s world of quick pleasures.

I enjoyed the pace of this book; it was a fun read, driven by a good mix of plot, character development, and dialogue. Huxley’s dystopian world seems to be different than other dystopias: secret police, torture, and instant execution are not practices in this totalitarian government. Rather than controlling civilization through these measures, the government in Brave New World does so through pleasure, the destruction of the family, controlled births, and conditioning. Dissenters in this society are not simply murdered. Rather, they are sent away or even taken in as high-ranking, free-thinking officials (in the case of Mustapha Mond).

I didn’t rank this higher because some of the characters didn’t quite make sense to me. John, the Savage, took a sharp turn at the end of the novel. Perhaps as a protest against civilization, he started living alone in intentional suffering, whipping himself viciously. I believe that this was a product of his lifelong loneliness, first as an outcast on the reservation and second as an outcast in civilization. If this is the case, I wish that Huxley had touched on this internal turmoil more. Note that I am being very critical here. This was a great book that has left me with a lot to think about. I enjoyed it as I read, and I’m very glad I read it.

This is a very different rating from my other books. I wasn’t enthralled by this book. Rather, this was a very helpful and insightful book. It helped me understand Christianity a good deal more. Lewis’s arguments weren’t air-tight, so I treated this book more as a taster (and that was its intention). This book was originally spoken on the radio before it was put into text, thus the free-flowing, less pedantic tone. This explains his argument style better. Rather than getting deep into the weeds of theology and persuasion, Lewis only scrapes the surface. Regardless, this was a good read. I would recommend this to any Christian or anyone interested in Christianity.

Dostoevsky has an incredible way of conveying the innermost depths of the human mind. His work in The Double is no exception. The Double was a psychological and disorienting novel, and its scope was quite narrow, focusing solely on the main character, Yakov Petrovich Goliadkin. This book was reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s The Trial. Overall, this was a solid book with very interesting writing. It wasn’t quite gripping, I’d say, both in plot and character development. That being said, this book does not lack depth.

I didn’t rank this higher than a 7/10 because it didn’t draw me in. It wasn’t as thought-provoking as other recent reads, like my recent Tolstoys, and I wasn’t able to learn much about other characters. I learned a ton about Goliadkin’s mind, and he did gradually change, but his arc was not that impactful to me. The “arc” wasn’t that much curved, if you will. This was more of a study on Goliadkin than an observance of change: we eventually discover who he his as we venture to the depths of his mind.

This is the story of a man who slowly endures an enigmatic illness that eventually ends his life. His body and mind decay while he suffers in the darkness of his bedroom. Ivan Ilyich lived a life of status and decorum but never one of fulfillment. He is jaded and embittered with regret, misdirected purpose, and hatred both for himself and for those around him. His doctors, wife, children, colleagues, and friends all lie to him, all avoiding the fact that this disease will inevitably kill him. They choose decorum over honesty and true human connection. Gerasim, the servant boy, however, is the only person truly honest with Ilyich. He treats him with simple, honest compassion and frankly addresses Ilyich about his coming death. His presence shows that love, truth, and human warmth are more real and life-affirming than status or intellectual detachment.

It is not until the last page of this novella that Ilyich finds redemption: he departs from his hatred and sullenness and, in his last words, seeks forgiveness from his family. He sees that the hatred he has for everyone around him is simply the hatred he has for himself and his own life. Not until realizing this did Ilyich’s heart become filled with love and humility.

This is a story about the fragility of life, the lies of status and social norms, the search for meaning and fulfillment, isolation, human connection, and the redemptive power of love and selflessness. Tolstoy impressively puts the reader into the heart of Ivan Ilyich. Reading this, I suffered with him, and his final transformation felt like a transformation of my own heart.

The beginning of this book was slow. There were a lot of characters to introduce, and Hat Creek’s journey to Montana was slow to pick up. As I kept reading, though, the story got better and better. This happened in two ways. First, the scope of their journey increased. As they traveled on, they saw new, beautiful territory, had more action-packed encounters, and their fear of an Indian attack against them grew. Second, and more importantly, the characters and their relationships developed as the story went on, giving me a better view into their hearts. A complaint I had of this book was its lack of emotional and philosophical depth, but the last portion of the book washed that away.

This book did a great job of capturing my imagination. It placed me on a horse, riding next to Gus and Call, with a revolver on my hip. As I rode, I traveled through the dry Texas desert, through the grassy plains of Kansas and Nebraska, through the cold desert of Wyoming, and finally to the snowy, beautiful plains and mountains of Montana. This book was a window into the American West and the culture of the cowboy.

Call’s refusal to accept Newt as his son was the most thought-provoking and emotionally impactful part of this book. This was a focal point in the last few chapters, but I wish that it had been touched on more throughout the book. The female characters, Clara and Lorena (and Elmira), are extremely important. Through each of them and their various suitors, McMurtry reveals the multifaceted nature of love and points to a man’s poignant longing for a woman.

I’m very pleased with the ending of this book. In the last few chapters, I was filled with this hope that Call would finally accept Newt as his son. Even after he set off to go back to Texas to bury Gus, I was hoping that Newt would chase after him. Yet, this never happened. The book ends with this quiet, cold burn. I was hoping for Call’s redemption, but that never happened. This left me with a lot to think about.

Some important themes: justice, masculinity, the fragility of life, adventure, friendship, pride and sin, (distorted) love, motherhood and fatherhood, discipline vs. gratification (Call vs. Gus).

Last note: this is the longest book I have ever read. I read it at a lightning pace, averaging around 30,000 words per day. This should be a testament to how drawn I was to this story.

I was very excited to finally read this book all the way through. During my senior year of high school, in AP Lit, I read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and loved it. Still, it remains one of my favorite novels. Wanting more of Dostoevsky, I bought Notes from Underground in the summer of 2021. Upon starting the book, however, I quickly realized that this was very different than Crime and Punishment. I was confused and disoriented, and I never made it past the “Underground” section of the book. I deemed Notes too difficult and set it aside.

This spring, after reading 1984 (the inaugural book of my new reading journey), I gave Notes another attempt. Again, I had the same reaction to it as I did before, and I didn’t make it any further. Despite these failed attempts at reading it, I didn’t dismiss Notes. Instead, appreciating Dostoevsky’s powerful writing ability, told myself that I wasn’t ready yet. “I’ll read it later in life.” But after reading several more books, I had adopted a more literary mindset. I wanted to give it another shot. But before I started reading again, I made sure to do some research on the context and purpose of this work. This proved to be incredibly helpful. So now, my review.

Notes from Underground’s first section, “Underground,” is a 40-page diatribe written haphazardly by the main character and narrator, the Underground Man. This section is meant to be dense, self-contradictory, and disorienting so as to introduce the reader to the mind of this Underground Man. Ultimately, he vehemently argues against rationalism and romanticism and instead argues that men do not always act in their own interests. Rather, a conscious man’s paramount goal is to exert his own free will, no matter how. Thus, someone may subject himself to great suffering simply for the sake of proving his freedom. The Underground Man’s argument is flawed, but this is intentional. I found this very interesting. Dostoevsky has the Underground Man break traditional form, repeat himself, address the readers directly, and do other peculiar things, which in turn creates the image of a highly eccentric and neurotic man. A sick and twisted man.

Next, the “Apropos of the Wet Snow” section. Here, the Underground Man tells the readers of his past experiences. This section reads more like a novel and has a simpler form. I was fascinated by how truly neurotic the Underground Man is. He is filled with self-doubt and loathing, and he projects this onto everyone he encounters. Dostoevsky does a phenomenal job of revealing the mind of this man, not through telling us, but through the Underground Man’s own telling of his stories. Such a creative and powerful method. There were points in this section where I was literally laughing out loud at how absurd the Man was. The crippling fear and hate that so filled him were beyond the point of cringing or pity. I simply laughed.

The end of the book is great, and we’re not strictly told what message to take away. In a strange way, the Underground Man is both a satirical caricature of the “enlightened man” who can reason his way through all of life and someone who exemplifies many strange but real qualities of everyday people. He is a case both for and against existentialism. Overall, a great book. Thought-provoking, unique, and entertaining. Would recommend, and I will be reading more Dostoevsky down the road.

This was my first time reading Tolstoy, and I was very pleased. I was enthralled by the setting of this book; the Caucasus mountains, the Terek river, the forests and dunes, the Cossack village, the Chechens and Nogai, the Cossacks, and the village women all fascinated me. This was such a unique setting, and it makes me want to travel to that region.

I related a lot to Olenin, a young man with great opportunities ahead of him who seeks true happiness. He goes to the Caucasus to get away from the stuffiness of Moscow and start a new life in the mountains. This new place quickly becomes his home, yet he is still an outsider. He adopts a mindset of complete conviction and restraint: he will find his true happiness through serving others. He gives his horse to Lukashka for no apparent reason, and he resists his urge to pursue a relationship with Maryanka, viewing her as a noble and beautiful statue and nothing more.

This worldview changes, however, when he meets Beletsky, a fellow Moscow aristocrat. His true aim now is to serve his own happiness above all else. His entire world then revolves around Maryanka. Rather than hunting, exploring, or passing time with Uncle Eroshka, he spends hours watching Maryanka through his window, visiting her parents, and planning his next interaction with her. He feels the deepest sense of love in his heart for her.

By the end of the book, we see that Maryanka could never have truly loved Olenin. He was an outsider and always would be. He couldn’t relate to her. She is a Cossack, he is not. Olenin’s new self-serving worldview fails him. He is now wounded, and so is Maryanka.

In the last chapter of the book, Uncle Eroshka tells a story to Olenin about his bullet wound. While it healed, the bullet still remains. This is Olenin’s love story. But, in his telling of the story, Eroshka is distracted and dismissive. He’s a babbling old man. This represents his relationships with the Cossacks: he can befriend them and even become close with them, he can adopt their way of life, but he will never truly be one of them. It is a game, just like the half-hearted telling of Uncle Eroshka’s story.

What did I learn from The Cossacks? Really, it didn’t give me an answer, but it rather asked me questions. What is happiness? And how does one attain it? Are we to serve others, even at the expense of ourselves? If life is so short, why don’t we simply drink and shoot and chase after women? How does a man know that he is in love? What is it to be in love? Tolstoy gives no resolution, only the ache of the bullet still lodged in the flesh.

Gosh, this was a boring book. I now know that I don’t like McCarthy’s style at all. His language is stripped-down, understated, minimalist. He describes nothing. No internal dialogue. No views into the hearts of the characters, minus Chigurh and Ed Tom a little bit. The dialogue, without any quotations, is very hard to follow. The plot is sometimes unclear at points because it is so understated. There is no drama (which is maybe the point). I only finished this book so quickly because I wanted to get onto the next thing and not have my money go to waste. I loved the movie, loved it. But this was pretty bad.

Redeeming qualities: cool story, western vibes, Texas setting, manly, gunfights.

There was one consistent stream of interior monologue: Ed Tom’s reflections at the beginning of the chapters. SOOO boring. Jeez. I skipped most of the last three because I couldn’t get through them.

Emotionally distant, stylistically flat, thematically inaccessible, and ultimately a chore to read. Ultra-minimalist, emotionally vacant characters, nihilistic, fatalistic. A drag. I now know that I enjoy books with emotional depth, philosophical/moral weight, rich dialogue, sense of meaning/transformation/triumph. I’m not drawn to flat/sparse prose, detached or unreadable characters, nihilism or moral ambiguity for its own sake, and fiction that mimics reality so closely it forgets to be interesting.

Very interesting commentary and conclusions, but a very slow read. The first portion of the book informs the reader of the historical context: interesting. Then, we read about Battalion 101’s mass murders, first in Jozefow and then elsewhere. These accounts, at first, were very interesting to read. Indeed very heavy, but cool to see into the minds of these men. Then, the book took a very boring turn. Catalogs and catalogs, numbers and dates, and page-long German names. It got very boring, and I began to skim.

Finally, in the “Ordinary Men” chapter, Browning departs from this stale retelling of historical events and provides his own commentary. This is the meat and potatoes of the book. Through illuminating and compelling arguments, he makes the case that myriad factors contribute to the creation of these mass murderers, namely, conformity, deference to authority, indoctrination, etc. Very cool stuff and very applicable to today: anyone can be susceptible to these things, we must shield our minds and moralities from them.

Then, Browning defended his work and dissented with one of his most vocal critics, Goldhagen. This was brutally dry, but had interesting points.

Overall, this book was pretty dry but had very important and profoundly interesting conclusions.

This was pretty good. When reading, I quickly picked up on the characters of this allegory: Major is Marx/Lenin, Napoleon is Stalin, and so on. It was entertaining to see how the animals on their farm panned out. Around halfway through the book, I thought that, while Orwell’s idea for this book was creative, he had already exhausted it: I got the gist. It wasn’t until the last portion of the book that it gained my deep appreciation. In the end, we see both the pigs and the farmers lord their corrupt power over their farms. Both the communist elites (the pigs) and the human farmers (capitalists) selfishly grasp at power at the expense of others. Animal Farm is not a childish stab at communism; it is a powerful story that displays the evils of corrupt hierarchies everywhere.

After reading East of Eden, I wanted to read something very short. This was my first stab at Hemingway, whom I was very excited to read. I had previously heard about the masculine stoicism of Hemingway’s characters, especially in this book. I was looking forward to seeing if he lived up to the hype.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered that I do not like Hemingway’s linguistic style. The stripped-down, barren sentences devoid of punctuation left me bored and sometimes confused. His style made the book seem to drag on at a snail’s pace.

However, I loved the thematic content of this book. The old Cuban setting, the grit and stoicism of the Old Man, his struggle against the seemingly indomitable marlin. His grace under pressure and desire to press on. The ending was great: after his grueling journey which led to triumph and then ultimately brutal defeat, he calmly sets aside any self-doubt and plans for his next fishing outing. A true man.

Incredible. Perhaps the best book I’ve ever read. East of Eden is a story about good and evil: sin, conquering sin, being engulfed in sin. Redemption, friendship, loss. It’s a story about Cain and Abel, about man and Christ. East of Eden is the story of the fall of man and how we are to live as sinners... Where can we look? What can we do? It is a story about Jesus: “And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” Complete with incredible character arcs, endless great quotes, and a world of life lessons, East of Eden is the story. Thou mayest!

Cold, gritty, icy, windy, cold, wet, and cold. Shackleton’s leadership, the endurance of his men, navigational prowess. My eyes were super glued to this book for three days. Such an incredible story, almost unbelievable. And perfectly depicted by Lansing. The use of journal entries was great. Fast-paced, yet you feel the grueling freezing of time for these men. An inspiring read. Every man should read this book.

How do we know what we are told is true? What happens when you go against everyone around you? Authoritarianism, suppression, truth, surveillance. In the second half of the book, we see Winston’s terrible torture and decay. We see a man completely crushed. His mind is chewed up, swallowed, and spat out again into something entirely different. At the end of the book, Winston is not even a shell of what he once was.

I had previously thought that people only liked 1984 because it calls out surveillance, totalitarianism, and fake news. These things only scrape the surface of the novel. Great read overall.