Long books, dense books, old books, and stylish books are generally more work than other books, and are generally more rewarding. This owes to their difficulty. For one, shelled peanuts are more fun to eat than the unshelled; it’s a dumb instinct, but we like cracking shells and extracting our prize. There are other, more intellectual satisfactions: challenging books invite the reader to be a collaborator, explorer, or duellist, rather than just a passive receptacle for the author’s meaning. Writers should build challenge into their books, then. Continue reading →

Human intelligence is whatever technology cannot do. As technology has improved, the machines’ jurisdiction has expanded and human intellectual achievement plays out in an increasingly limited field. Some believe that the restriction has represented a diminishment in our abilities for the sake of convenience. Some ancient Greeks were leery of written records, seeing them as threats to memory, which was more valued then. Handheld calculators trivialized arithmetic and forced many elementary school teachers to field that question the lazy and efficient always ask: “Why should I have to do this? Let the machine handle it.” With the advances in computers over the last sixty years, the machine can handle more and more. Search engines have obviated recall more thoroughly than pen and paper; Photoshop has taken some of the painter’s most grueling tasks and reduced it to five minutes and some filters; GPS navigation systems may have robbed future hack comedians of the “stubborn male won’t ask for directions” bit. Continue reading →

Pop science is best taken in 225 page doses, with a punchy title and a grandiose subtitle. Thinking, Fast and Slow has a weird rhythm in the title, and I don’t know why this book is 445 pages long. Could probably be trimmed to 400 if the author stopped talking about all his eminent colleagues. The story is about our brain’s two idiot helmsmen, dubbed System 1 and System 2. 1 is gullible and keyed up; 2 is lazy and suggestible. Each chapter lays out our lab-tested inconsistencies, how we fall prey to silly manipulations or blindly accept the inuitive and wrong.

As any non-fiction with an economic bent, the takeaways are dismal – but still resonant. Do you remember being young, and making mistakes because you didn’t know anything? And now that you know things, you still make mistakes, only through carelessness or missteps that are so obvious in hindsight? Thinking, Fast and Slow explains the mechanics of your fallibility, and only offers hope that’s been qualified to a homeopathic concentration. Your interest in the book depends on your appetite for self-knowledge that is accurate but probably not useful.

Various books and movies have imagined how gladiatorial combat might be adapted for reality TV: The Running Man, Series 7, and Battle Royale are a few. The Hunger Games, released in 2008, is the micro-genre’s latest and most successful entry – it will soon be a major film. It resembles all its predecessors, and in the case of Battle Royale the image is so spitting that some have murmured about plagiarism. The author, Suzanne Collins, says she had not heard of Battle Royale before submitting her manuscript. One must dig deep before encountering a substantive difference, though. Continue reading →

I read Thank You For Arguing recently, and found its how-to approach to rhetoric suspect. Logical Self-Defense, by Ralph Johnson and J. Anthony Blair, has a title that might suggest a similar approach, but that lame title belies a thorough and sober introduction to logical argumentation. Johnson and Blair’s straightforward teaching style, with heavy use of the Costanza Method, is in many ways superior to Thank You For Arguing’s gimmicks, but the books’ topics are different enough that I recommend them as companion pieces.

A beginner’s first task is to not screw up. To not screw up, you need to know what not to do. This is why basic instruction is a lot of Don’ts: don’t touch the stove, don’t look down, don’t worship false idols, etc. We usually learn through emulation, but knowing how not to do something can be equivalent – or superior — to knowing how. Call it learning through failure, or teaching with positive punishment, or the Costanza Method, as articulated by Jerry on Seinfeld: If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

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A recent James Wood article in the New Yorker wondered how much we can infer about a person from the composition of his or her library. That piece decided “not much,” because those books are chosen for display, and therefore reveal nothing more than a Facebook profile. The libraries on offer at illegal torrenting sites are more intriguing, because these PDFs are being digitally thumbed and then deleted straightaway. Without those tollbooths of potential embarrassment to navigate – cashiers or credit card statement, housemates or spouses – is it any wonder people are downloading some embarrassing shit? The titles you’ll find on these sites reflect the aspirations and anxieties of young men on the internet.

Of the top 100 most popular ebooks on the torrenting website The Pirate Bay, 90 are how-tos: how to draw, cook, speed read, or exercise. Eight will explain how to make a woman come. Titles include The Female Orgasm Black Box, How to Blow Her Mind in Bed, and THE SEXUAL KEY – How to Use the Structure of Female Emotion to Arouse a Woman in Minutes. The Kama Sutra, the classic, remains popular. Beyond the esoterica of the vulva, social manipulation is another popular genre. There are heaps of guides on body language, small talk, and handshake technique. How to Win Friends and Influence People, the classic, remains popular. Continue reading →

1. Summertime, J.M. Coetzee — “It reached me so directly and shockingly – like someone touching your cheek without warning”
2. Rabbit, Run, John Updike — “The book is perfectly awful.”
3. The Street of Crocodiles, Bruno Schulz — “By exiling ennui and irony from his perception, Schulz creates for us an enchanted world of marvelous colors, majestic skies, and unusual birds.”
4. Moby Dick, Herman Melville — “livelier and less pretentious, grander and more eccentric than I had imagined.”
5. Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser — “Being a writer may be a prerequisite for enjoying Dangerous Laughter” Continue reading →

“But then, what are books for if not to change our lives?”

Over the 133 book reviews I’ve written since I began blogging in 2007, there aren’t many through lines, since no one asked for them in the first place. Therefore they have taken whatever form I prefer at time of writing. I’ve moved away from consumer guides, and have even moved away from describing the books. The last review contained about two sentences on the book that I was ostensibly reviewing. But for four years I have tried to keep myself out of the reviews, as much as I could. This was to conserve the critic’s authority, and the keep the subject squarely under lights.

Reviewing Coetzee’s Summertime in that manner would be disingenuous. It reached me so directly and shockingly – like someone touching your cheek without warning – that I can’t judge or even describe its mechanics in any context outside myself. So I won’t, and I’ll write about myself, even as I pretend to review a book. Continue reading →