2024 book reviews, #36. I’m 55 this year, which means I’ve begun developing “old people problems” for the first time in my life; specifically, I’m sta2024 book reviews, #36. I’m 55 this year, which means I’ve begun developing “old people problems” for the first time in my life; specifically, I’m starting to develop arthritis, and the pain that this causes is starting to put a major crimp in my life as an urban-dwelling heavy pedestrian, something I find quite alarming. So when this book popped up in the “newly acquired” list at the Chicago Public Library, I went ahead and put it on reserve right away, and just got done reading it today.
It’s well worth your time, although I will say that it essentially only repeats information I’m reading in all the other wellness books I’ve been reading these days, confirming yet again what the latest research in modern medicine has been seemingly saying over and over in the last ten years -- that conditions we used to think of as naturally occurring ones in old age that nothing can be done about, from arthritis to high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s, can in fact be largely prevented by a change in lifestyle, as well as focusing on a few specific new things once you get over the age of 50. To her credit, though, author Meredith Warner (a veteran orthopedic surgeon and professor at Louisiana State University) describes this well-known advice using an acronym I’ve never heard before, the easily remembered MEDS which stands for Mindset, Exercise, Diet and Sleep. Or in other words, if you adopt the mindset that you really can change your health for the better through your own actions; reduce stress through meditation; get the government’s recommended weekly amount of moderate exercise, including resistance training; follow the Mediterranean eating plan, plus add a few supplements to your life (most importantly omega-3); plan your meals to always take place at certain times, and go at least 12 hours a day without eating anything at all (i.e. no late-night snacking); and get a good solid seven hours or more of sleep each night (including going to bed at the same time each night), you can largely eliminate the pain that comes with orthopedic conditions such as arthritis, as well as lower your chances of getting degenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s to almost zero.
It’s welcome news, even if Warner isn’t saying anything particularly new or radical here; in fact, you could say that the news is even better precisely because it’s not radical new information, but merely a confirmation of what health book after health book after health book in the 21st century is now saying about how to live a life that keeps you healthy far into old age without the need for medications or surgeries at all. Warner calls the MEDS protocol “lifestyle medicine,” which I think is a very smart term for it; so I’ll be calling it that myself from now, and considering it a legitimate form of mainstream medicine that all of us oldies should be adhering to on a daily basis. The book comes strongly recommended in this spirit, that you won’t be learning anything new here that you can’t read in dozens of other books on the subject, but that Warner puts it all together in a smart and easy-to-understand way in this particular version....more
2024 reads, #19. DID NOT FINISH. I’ve been a big fan of the psychotherapy process ever since starting my own sessions back in 2015, so much so that I’2024 reads, #19. DID NOT FINISH. I’ve been a big fan of the psychotherapy process ever since starting my own sessions back in 2015, so much so that I’ve spent a lot of time vaguely thinking about what it would be like to become a therapist myself (which, to be clear, I’m not planning on doing, because I’m already in my mid-fifties and wouldn’t want to yet again start all over in my career like that). That’s had me reading and really enjoying a number of books over the years by therapists specifically about the therapy process, mostly by the brilliant Irvin Yalom (but for more, see my reviews of Love’s Executioner, Creatures of a Day, and Staring at the Sun), as well as that contemporary book that got so much traction several years ago, Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.
That made me think that Joshua Fletcher’s brand-new And How Does That Make You Feel? would be right up my alley, a book that promises to be a similar behind-the-scenes look at what an actual therapist is going through in their own head as they go through the process of analyzing and helping their clients, which I had especially high hopes for because it took forever for my name to finally come to the top of the reserve list at the Chicago Public Library, and typically books that popular tend to be pretty good as well. But alas, this turned out to be almost worthless, because Fletcher doesn’t actually provide any insights whatsoever here, but instead presents his inner voice as a series of “little people who live inside him” -- yes, just like the Disney children’s movie -- then doesn’t give these little people anything more insightful to say than such facile, obvious, kneejerk reactions like, “I’m scared of this guy!”, “I’m proud of her!”, and “I really have to pee!”
Jesus Christ, bro, are you telling me that a professional full-time therapist has absolutely nothing more interesting to share about their profession than childish little quips about his clients’ physical attributes and whether or not they stammer while they talk? Then again, I suppose this is partly my fault for not actually reading Fletcher’s bio before picking up the book, where I would’ve seen him proudly talking about his popular TikTok account; and that’s all a grown-up needs to hear to now know that they’re dealing with a glorified man-child and not an actual grown-up, which is exactly what this book feels like, like a little child trying to explain psychotherapy in ten-second snippets while doing his cutesy little cheerleader dance or whatever the hell those TikTok children are into these days. This is now the third contemporary book in a single week I’ve been forced to give up on before even making it 25 pages in, which makes me want to never pick up a book published after 2020 again the entire rest of my life; and while I know already that I won’t actually stick to that threat, certainly it’s just more evidence to me of how completely and totally contemporary literature has now permanently fallen into a disastrous pit of unreadable schlock, as we now all just become inured to a world where the marketing sociopaths are now the ones making all the book acquisition decisions anymore, and they aren’t greenlighting anyone who doesn’t have a TikTok account and writes at a third-grade level. Avoid, avoid, avoid; for the love of all that is holy, avoid. ...more
To make an important ethical disclosure right away, let me mention that I actually got paid to be one of this book's editors, so it would be impossiblTo make an important ethical disclosure right away, let me mention that I actually got paid to be one of this book's editors, so it would be impossible for me to write anything resembling an "objective review" like is typically shared at this website. So instead, let me point you to an interview I recently did with Steve for my newsletter, in which we got to talk in depth about how this book came about and what it was like to publish it. I strongly encourage you to check that out, and then pick up a copy of the book yourself! ...more
2024 reads, #4. DID NOT FINISH. I came across this the other day in one of the Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood, and I thought I'd read it sim2024 reads, #4. DID NOT FINISH. I came across this the other day in one of the Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood, and I thought I'd read it simply because I know it's a popular book that's influenced a lot of people, and I thought I'd see for myself why. Yep, it's pretty much what I expected, 334 pages of "YAY JESUS!!!", which as an atheist was something I could tolerate for only a little bit before reaching my fill. You're getting pretty much exactly what you were expecting beforehand when picking this up, so let that guide your decision whether or not to read it yourself....more
2024 reads, #3. DID NOT FINISH. I picked this up as part of my eternal efforts to become a better book editor, the thing I do for a living, and I imag2024 reads, #3. DID NOT FINISH. I picked this up as part of my eternal efforts to become a better book editor, the thing I do for a living, and I imagine this particular book has a lot to teach if you can actually stick with it. But with it being exclusively about how to developmentally edit academic nonfiction, a type of book I don't take on very often as a freelancer for self-publishing authors; and with it being the exact kind of extremely dry, extremely tedious writing on the subject you would expect from a fellow academe; and with the whole thing being laid out in teeny-tiny little 8 point type, I ended up giving up on this quite quickly. Your results may vary, though, so by all means pick it up if this description of it sounds interesting. ...more
2023 reads, #101. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outl2023 reads, #101. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outlined for the last six months (the project being an attempt to advertise my skills as a freelance romance editor); and to get myself more into the mindset of the alt-right guys who run the "New Sparta" post-apocalyptic settlement where my story takes place, I've started tearing through a bunch of books I once found grouped together on the Pirate Bay under the title "The Red Pill Collection." This particular title is one of those incel "how to trick women into sleeping with you" books; there are a lot of these kinds of books in this Red Pill Collection, over a dozen altogether, so sort of nakedly shows what's on the mind of most of these young alt-right men, along with bodybuilding and personal finance among other niche interests. This one is at least unlike the other incel books I've now read in that it doesn't try to soften or normalize its very aggressively sexist message by even the tiniest bit; author Gary Brodsky just flat-out hits the ground running right at the very beginning by letting us know that women are easily confused morons who mostly are only good for breeding, and here's a guide into tricking their lizard brains into opening their legs for you, so you can implant your seed.
It's crude, and it's offensive, I'll give you that; but now that I'm in my fifties and have like half the testosterone in my bloodstream as I used to in my twenties, I can also look back with extremely clear eyes now and understand just how much of my twenties were in fact dedicated solely to this subject, of getting my penis into as many warm, wet holes as I could back then (no matter how that manifested from one night to the next). This is simply a part of having a huge amount of testosterone and estrogen in your system; these are hormones specifically designed to encourage breeding, so make you kind of crazy about the subject so that you're going around humping everything that moves. So is it actively evil to have such a naked flat-out guide to this subject written out in black-and-white form like this? Eeehhhhhhhhhhhhnmmmmmaybe not really? Isn't much of the free time of most people in their twenties already devoted either to rutting like pigs or convincing your body with your own hands that you are? Aren't a lot of the rituals of our twenties already based around these opportunities to indulge these hormones? What you think the answers to these questions are will also tell you whether you should read one of these undisguised Red Pill-oriented guides to the subject; but certainly the advice in a book like this works, I can confirm by being in my mid-fifties and now having four decades of sexual activity in my life. You can have a lot of sex using these tactics that will mostly be kind of unsatisfying (but admittedly with a few high points), often substance-fueled and blurry and happening in the middle of the night, which you then immediately regret the next morning; so if you're in your early twenties and this is exactly the kind of sex life you're looking for, then more power to you, I suppose....more
2023 reads, #100. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outl2023 reads, #100. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outlined for the last six months (the project being an attempt to advertise my skills as a freelance romance editor); and to get myself more into the mindset of the alt-right guys who run the "New Sparta" post-apocalyptic settlement where my story takes place, I've started tearing through a bunch of books I once found grouped together on the Pirate Bay under the title "The Red Pill Collection." This particular title is one of those incel "how to trick women into sleeping with you" books; there are a lot of these kinds of books in this Red Pill Collection, over a dozen altogether, and the more of them I read, the more I'm realizing that all of them are based fundamentally around a handful of very general wrong assumptions about the world, which then makes all the advice worthless since it's all based on assumptions that were wrong in the first place.
To begin with, although many of these incel books use the same language about romance that general society does, stating that the goal is to be in a "relationship" where you are "dating" and promising that this book will teach you how to do that, the books never define these terms in the way the rest of society does; for while most of us would think of elements like emotional intimacy or the ability to show vulnerability as some of the hallmark traits that come with dating, these books invariably define a "relationship" as "the moment you can finally convince her to let you put your penis in and rub it around until you have an orgasm," at which point your "relationship" is technically over and it's perfectly fine to go find another "relationship" if you want, or maybe try again for another "relationship" with this particular one. That then leads incel writers to encourage their readers to think of the entire female gender as basically interchangeable vaginas with legs, to be purchased, used and discarded like any other consumer item freshly shipped from a Chinese factory, instead of being treated as the unique, interesting individual each one is (and that incels can manage to understand about fellow men, making it even more maddening that they can't seem to be able to imagine women in the same way).
And then they also get something right about the human condition -- we humans really do prefer to spend time with other humans who are confident, courageous, have specific opinions and sometimes feel passionate about them, while we tend to dislike wishy-washy, timid, cowardly pushovers -- but instead of acknowledging that as a universal about the human condition that both men and women feel at all times about all other men and women they spend time with, the incels state that this is proof that all women wish to be dominated, manhandled and have all their obligations to make decisions taken away from them, never seeming to understand that there are like twenty steps in behavior between "doormat" and "bullying asshole," that you don't have to automatically swing wildly from one extreme to the other.
With these kinds of basics about the "rules" and "tricks" to dating and successful relationships being so wrong from the start, that makes all the conclusions later made about these basics wrong as well, and the advice given just sometimes ludicrous stuff that would sound like a biting parody of the alt-right if it wasn't in fact true. In fact the simple solution to all of this is just to treat women like the individual humans they are, just like these incels are seemingly able to do for all the men around them in their life. Young men's brains get scrambled sometimes by all that testosterone coursing through their blood, obsessively compelling them to copulate and breed as often and as with as many partners as possible; this causes them sometimes to look at women as some sort of inscrutable race of space aliens, and a lot of these incel books take that assumption as their beginning, this idea that women will never be able to be understood by men, so here instead are just some easy tricks you can perform that will somehow magically produce the results you want (i.e. penis in vagina), however those tricks might mysteriously work, who knows how. The real key to "successful relationships," or at least as it's being defined here as "lots of highly satisfying sex that might or might not lead to long-term monogamy," is actually the opposite, and to understand that women are simply men but instead filled with estrogen instead of testosterone, which changes a little bit about them but otherwise are creatures who think, behave, act, and prioritize the same exact things as you and me. Treat a smart, attractive woman like the complex, unique human being she is, and you're setting yourself up for having her be attracted to you right back (that is, like DeMarco rightly points out, if you randomly happen to pass a few genetic tests with that particular person over the stuff their lizard brain reacts to, which must be passed before that person can be legitimately sexually attracted to you).
Granted, I'm in my "post-male-menopause" years (or whatever you want to call it) of my mid-fifties, and I have something like half the testosterone in my bloodstream now as I did as a young man; in fact, it's only been in middle-age as my testosterone level has slowly gone down that I've begun to be able to see women in this more clarifying light in the first place, so maybe there's something inherently about the effects on the brain testosterone and estrogen have that's always going to make this subject tough for young men and young women for the entire rest of time. Whatever the case, I can definitively state now after a full adult lifetime of sexual activity that following the advice in these kinds of books may occasionally (or even regularly) result in the kind of mediocre, often substance-fueled, halfway-satisfying blurry sex in the middle of the night that you only kind of remember the next day and you instantly regret, but that to have the true intimacy (and truly mindblowing sex) of a legitimate romantic relationship, you need to do the opposite of what these books say and actually learn how to treat the women in your life as fully complex, sometimes maddeningly individualistic human beings, with all their individual assets and faults, and who fundamentally want the same exact things out of both life and a sexual partner as you do. (It's not hard to find young women who are horny and just want to fuck all day long, because like the men, every single one of them are and do; the challenge is in convincing them to trust you enough to reveal that information.) Take the advice in these kinds of books with that long-term view in mind. ...more
2023 reads, #100. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outl2023 reads, #100. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outlined for the last six months (the project being an attempt to advertise my skills as a freelance romance editor); and to get myself more into the mindset of the alt-right guys who run the "New Sparta" post-apocalyptic settlement where my story takes place, I've started tearing through a bunch of books I once found grouped together on the Pirate Bay under the title "The Red Pill Collection." This particular title is one of those incel "how to trick women into sleeping with you" books; there are a lot of these kinds of books in this Red Pill Collection, over a dozen altogether, and the more of them I read, the more I'm realizing that all of them are based fundamentally around a handful of very general wrong assumptions about the world, which then makes all the advice worthless since it's all based on assumptions that were wrong in the first place.
To begin with, although many of these incel books use the same language about romance that general society does, stating that the goal is to be in a "relationship" where you are "dating" and promising that this book will teach you how to do that, the books never define these terms in the way the rest of society does; for while most of us would think of elements like emotional intimacy or the ability to show vulnerability as some of the hallmark traits that come with dating, these books invariably define a "relationship" as "the moment you can finally convince her to let you put your penis in and rub it around until you have an orgasm," at which point your "relationship" is technically over and it's perfectly fine to go find another "relationship" if you want, or maybe try again for another "relationship" with this particular one. That then leads incel writers to encourage their readers to think of the entire female gender as basically interchangeable vaginas with legs, to be purchased, used and discarded like any other consumer item freshly shipped from a Chinese factory, instead of being treated as the unique, interesting individual each one is (and that incels can manage to understand about fellow men, making it even more maddening that they can't seem to be able to imagine women in the same way).
And then they also get something right about the human condition -- we humans really do prefer to spend time with other humans who are confident, courageous, have specific opinions and sometimes feel passionate about them, while we tend to dislike wishy-washy, timid, cowardly pushovers -- but instead of acknowledging that as a universal about the human condition that both men and women feel at all times about all other men and women they spend time with, the incels state that this is proof that all women wish to be dominated, manhandled and have all their obligations to make decisions taken away from them, never seeming to understand that there are like twenty steps in behavior between "doormat" and "bullying asshole," that you don't have to automatically swing wildly from one extreme to the other.
With these kinds of basics about the "rules" and "tricks" to dating and successful relationships being so wrong from the start, that makes all the conclusions later made about these basics wrong as well, and the advice given just sometimes ludicrous stuff that would sound like a biting parody of the alt-right if it wasn't in fact true. In fact the simple solution to all of this is just to treat women like the individual humans they are, just like these incels are seemingly able to do for all the men around them in their life. Young men's brains get scrambled sometimes by all that testosterone coursing through their blood, obsessively compelling them to copulate and breed as often and as with as many partners as possible; this causes them sometimes to look at women as some sort of inscrutable race of space aliens, and a lot of these incel books take that assumption as their beginning, this idea that women will never be able to be understood by men, so here instead are just some easy tricks you can perform that will somehow magically produce the results you want (i.e. penis in vagina), however those tricks might mysteriously work, who knows how. The real key to "successful relationships," or at least as it's being defined here as "lots of highly satisfying sex that might or might not lead to long-term monogamy," is actually the opposite, and to understand that women are simply men but instead filled with estrogen instead of testosterone, which changes a little bit about them but otherwise are creatures who think, behave, act, and prioritize the same exact things as you and me. Treat a smart, attractive woman like the complex, unique human being she is, and you're setting yourself up for having her be attracted to you right back (that is, like DeMarco rightly points out, if you randomly happen to pass a few genetic tests with that particular person over the stuff their lizard brain reacts to, which must be passed before that person can be legitimately sexually attracted to you).
Granted, I'm in my "post-male-menopause" years (or whatever you want to call it) of my mid-fifties, and I have something like half the testosterone in my bloodstream now as I did as a young man; in fact, it's only been in middle-age as my testosterone level has slowly gone down that I've begun to be able to see women in this more clarifying light in the first place, so maybe there's something inherently about the effects on the brain testosterone and estrogen have that's always going to make this subject tough for young men and young women for the entire rest of time. Whatever the case, I can definitively state now after a full adult lifetime of sexual activity that following the advice in these kinds of books may occasionally (or even regularly) result in the kind of mediocre, often substance-fueled, halfway-satisfying blurry sex in the middle of the night that you only kind of remember the next day and you instantly regret, but that to have the true intimacy (and truly mindblowing sex) of a legitimate romantic relationship, you need to do the opposite of what these books say and actually learn how to treat the women in your life as fully complex, sometimes maddeningly individualistic human beings, with all their individual assets and faults, and who fundamentally want the same exact things out of both life and a sexual partner as you do. (It's not hard to find young women who are horny and just want to fuck all day long, because like the men, every single one of them are and do; the challenge is in convincing them to trust you enough to reveal that information.) Take the advice in these kinds of books with that long-term view in mind....more
2023 reads, #99. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outli2023 reads, #99. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outlined for the last six months (the project being an attempt to advertise my skills as a freelance romance editor); and to get myself more into the mindset of the alt-right guys who run the "New Sparta" post-apocalyptic settlement where my story takes place, I've started tearing through a bunch of books I once found grouped together on the Pirate Bay under the title "The Red Pill Collection." This particular title is not that political per se, but instead is a more general book on personal finance; for those who don't know, the collective reading habits of red-pillers don't just consist of "Dark Enlightenment" philosophers like Jordan Peterson, but are supplemented with books about how to become financially independent, how to bodybuild and rapidly add muscle, how to trick women into having sex with you, and other kinds of highly specific how-to guides for achieving all the tertiary traits of the so-called "Perfect Man" such Red Pillers picture in their heads (and that you've seen yourself) when thinking about the end goal of this entire process.
And indeed, this isn't actually a bad book on the subject at all, although author MJ DeMarco's plan for becoming a millionaire in five to ten years is a highly, highly specific one: in a nutshell, it starts with opening your own C-corporation focused on one of five specific types of passive income detailed in the book (such as real estate, publishing or software, to name three examples); considering that your main asset in life to which you devote 100% of any extra time or money you might find yourself with, constantly increasing its value as much and as often as you possibly can; considering all the personal revenue the business generates as your "wealth" that you should never spend under any circumstances; then investing that wealth into things that pay dividends and interest, and using that money for your actual day-to-day living expenses. The goal here is a smart one that actually works, which is to convert your hard labor into products that continue generating revenue even after the labor is done, increasing your hourly pay rate as quickly as possible; then investing 100% of that revenue into things that pay compound interest, since as he rightly points out, compound interest is almost like magic once you have millions to invest, so the goal is to get to that million in investment money as quickly as humanly possible, instead of the conventional wisdom of putting aside just a little money each year over the course of your entire career, thus ensuring that you won't have your million to start doing actual magic with until an entire three decades or more of working your slave-wage salaried job at an office you can't stand, dutifully putting aside your $5,000 a year in 401(k) money like your masters told you to.
As you're starting to see, this is the main thing that separates just a personal finance book from a Red Pill finance book, that it's not enough just to come up with a plan that works, but that you must devote a large amount of the page count (like DeMarco does here) to berating all the stupids of the world who don't know this secret to fast wealth (or even worse, can see it but are too much of pussies to go for it), and ensure your readers that they're smarter, better, and more deserving of this money than all those cucks, snowflakes and other undesirables out there, blindly believing in their 5% Roth IRAs as they toil for decades in service of the GigaChad who actually runs the company. So although DeMarco's advice here is very smart and realistic, wisely devoting the majority of the page count to all the things Red Pillers see in the popular culture that they should instead absolutely not do (waste money on bling-bling, invest in penny stocks, listen to cable-TV pundits, buy what everyone else is buying, etc.), and reminding readers that "getting rich fast" is not the same thing as "getting rich easy," which is what most "get rich quick" scams are actually promising (under his plan, you will easily be working 80-hour weeks for those five to ten years you're building wealth as rapidly as humanly possible), he shares this advice in a purposely more opinionated and obnoxious way than he needs to, setting up his arguments in a way that's often seen in Red Pill books across the rainbow of genres and subjects, that there are objective "winners" and "losers" in this world, and that those who follow his advice will be one of these winners, while ignoring his advice proves you to be one of life's losers.
This is a key element of Red Pill thought, I'm realizing as I make my way through more and more books in this collection, that the Red Piller is not just living the best life they can but rubbing it in the face of all the people who's told them over the years they can't, a Forever War mindset in which all of us humans are in a constant state of battle with all other humans from birth until death, and that for each battle won there must by definition be someone who lost that battle as well. So it's not enough to become rich; you must also be given the opportunity to gloat in the knowledge of all the IDIOTS who DIDN'T because they're not a DISCIPLINED GENIUS like you. It's not a coincidence, after all, that nearly every Red Pill-focused personal finance book I've now read (including this one) eventually has a section that reads, "Now, I'm not a believer in big flashy expensive empty symbols as proof to all the betas that you're one of the alphas of the world; but that said, let me tell you the story of the Lamborghini I bought at the age of 26, not because I really wanted it but just to rub it in all the fucking faces of everyone in college who told me I'd never be able to own a Lamborghini by 26."
It's this open hypocrisy and desperate passive-aggressive chasing of status that largely defines the Red Pill community (and really the far right altogether, no matter what the age or lifestyle); so no matter what the subject, you must expect some of this behavior in any book that's been included by Red Pill enthusiasts in a Red Pill collection. That's the case here as well; so although the advice itself is very practical, smart and realistic, you might want to take a pass on it anyway, depending on who you are. That would normally get the book three and a half stars, which I'm rounding down to three here at the no-half-star Goodreads....more
2023 reads, #98. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outli2023 reads, #98. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outlined for the last six months (the project being an attempt to advertise my skills as a freelance romance editor); and to get myself more into the mindset of the alt-right guys who run the "New Sparta" post-apocalyptic settlement where my story takes place, I've started tearing through a bunch of books I once found grouped together on the Pirate Bay under the title "The Red Pill Collection." This particular title is not that political per se, but instead is a more general self-help book, and so like all of these is basically Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People (my review), just rewritten in that particular new author's voice. The advice in these kinds of books is always simple to understand, but difficult for many people to actually do consistently, which is why they keep getting rewritten every year; for if you're someone who lacks the discipline to get these easy tasks actually done, of course you're going to think that perhaps reading one more book on the subject will finally do the trick.
I'll say, though, that this is one of those books I could see as a training manual for these New Spartans I'll be writing about in my novel, some of whom are supposed to be heroic and some of whom are villainous, because this deals with the same kind of weighty "here's how we get through the apocalypse as men" issues; after all, Chapter 1 starts right out with, "Embrace the fact that everyone dies, and that you might do so yourself tomorrow," and just gets cheerier from there. The guys in my novel are supposed to be the smart alt-right guys, the ones who survived the first wave of mass deaths that followed the initial apocalypse, so I'm looking specifically in this Red Pill Collection for books like this one that offer plain, straightforward advice, without all the "here's how to trick a woman into sleeping with you" and "here's how we're going to eventually take over the world" stuff that creeps into so many other books in this collection. Although easy to see why this was included in a collection of red pill books, it's not specifically a red pill book itself, so might be a better choice for those who want to understand what alt-right people take seriously without having to wade through all their lingo and hatred. ...more
2023 reads, #97. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outli2023 reads, #97. I'm getting geared up to finally write out the post-apocalyptic Proud Boys BDSM "dubious consent" erotic romance novel I've had outlined for the last six months (the project being an attempt to advertise my skills as a freelance romance editor); and to get myself more into the mindset of the alt-right guys who run the "New Sparta" post-apocalyptic settlement where my story takes place, I've started tearing through a bunch of books I once found grouped together on the Pirate Bay under the title "The Red Pill Collection." This particular title is a compilation of forum posts by the eponymous Pook at the popular incel website SoSuave.net, put together by another forum member by the pen-name of Gubby, and I have to admit that it's a kind of perfect Platonian example of both everything I'm fascinated by in the alt-right men's movement and everything that drives me crazy.
Just to begin with, although this book talks a lot about "dating" and "relationships" and what an incel can do to have these in their life, the way these events are described in the book are way off from the societal standard, with not one word spent on topics like emotional intimacy or personal vulnerability, but rather the entirety of a "relationship" being defined as "when a penis goes in and out of a vagina long enough and fast enough to produce an orgasm," at which point that "relationship" is over and it's time to go find another "relationship." This invariably then leads (like it always does in incel books) to the defining of the entire female gender not as individual humans each with their own individual personalities, quirks, likes and dislikes, but rather just an endless sea of interchangeable vaginas with legs, which you apply the same ol' shtick to over and over without ever bothering to get to know them as actual human beings, since things like personalities and interests aren't required for the incel definition of a "happy relationship."
Especially infuriating in these books is the way they do these incredibly strict and niche definitions of terms, then pretend that this is the global standard that applies in every situation with every person. Here, for example, Monsieur Pook very specifically defines a "very attractive woman" (the woman you're ultimately working up to under an incel dating system, because by the point that they finally take an interest in you, you will have truly earned that vagina with legs) exclusively as someone with long hair and big boobs, who wears a lot of makeup and regularly squeezes herself into tight, trashy dresses. For a bunch of guys complaining about how they can never have sex, they sure are voluntarily eliminating a lot of women who exist from consideration! I can state all this with some authority, because as a teen in the '80s, I suffered from a lot of the problems incels do too (inconsolably horny, awkward around women, finding myself in the "friend zone" a lot), but it was only decades later with a lot of hindsight that I realized that I could've been fucking hot teen girls left and right when I'd been in high school, that all the signs of their interest were clearly there, but that I eliminated the very idea of dating them from my head because they were too much this or not enough that. Once I got into my twenties and actually did start dating these women, they turned out to be super-interesting and way more sexually confident than some bleached-out Kardashian who's poured herself into some Spanx while hanging out at a club on the Jersey Shore, and it's maddening to hear these dudes complain about how they never have sex when the only women they'll even consider are airbrushed AI bots in lad magazines.
What's perhaps most infuriating of all, though, is the way these books get just a little bit of a situation right, just enough that the writing sounds serious and worth paying attention to, which is why these books keep selling and people just keep making more of them; but then they'll completely draw the wrong conclusion from this limited amount of true information, or take situations that's happened to them in particular as an aggressively obnoxious alt-right incel and state that this is the reaction that all creatures with a penis will forever always get from all creatures with vaginas. Like, Pook talks here about a common piece of wisdom in these incel books, that women generally dislike men who come across as weak, spineless, indecisive and easy to persuade; and that's a true statement about the world, in my opinion. But that has nothing to do with women's "mating rituals" or whatever these incel authors are attributing it to, but rather something that's simply true of the entire human race whenever they're hanging out with any other member of the human race, that all of us generally prefer to spend time with someone confident, courageous, with specific opinions and who can equally participate in a conversation about "where should we have dinner tonight?" Instead, Pook and these other incel writers state that this is proof that women want forceful, dominant, trick-playing "alpha males" to rule over them in a relationship with an iron fist like the animals they are, not bothering to acknowledge that you don't have to automatically go from being a doormat to being an asshole, that there are other shades of behavior in between those extremes. Or for another example, note here when Pook claims that "women simply aren't interested in your opinions," using this to claim that the proper response is to simply buy them pretty things and make sure to fuck them regularly, and just force your Star Wars and anime on them if they're not naturally interested. But Pook, bro, I gotta tell you, I've had dozens of female romantic partners over the decades who were interested in my opinions, just that my opinions weren't the crazy fucking woman-hating rantings of a fedora-wearing meninist, so no goddamn wonder you're finding that the women around you in your life aren't interested in your fucking opinions.
This is the tragedy of the alt-right movement, that they're getting something like 25 percent of it right, which is just enough to feel righteous and motivated, but then just so utterly fucking up the other 75 percent that everything they touch turns into cartoonishly terrible shit just a moment later. However, I can certainly state that a book like this will absolutely help get you into the mindset of someone who believes this stuff, if you're interested in writing a novel where they're the villain-heroes in a world gone mad. Read it for this reason and this reason only. ...more
2023 reads, #96. In the last year of my therapy sessions, I've been starting to use the relatively brand-new Internal Family Systems (IFS) methodology2023 reads, #96. In the last year of my therapy sessions, I've been starting to use the relatively brand-new Internal Family Systems (IFS) methodology of therapy more and more; and I've been responding to it really well, so I'm always excited to see a new book come out about this process, one that doesn't yet have a lot of documentation. For those unfamiliar with this style of therapy, it shares many of the same basic assumptions about physiology that Michael Pollan posits in his landmark book on psychedelics and the human brain, 2018's How to Change Your Mind (my review); basically, that the brain can be thought of like an orchestra with many sections (or "parts" of an "internal family" in IFS lingo), and that there's one section that acts as the orchestra's conductor, making sure all the other sections work in harmony (known as the "default mode network" in Pollan's book and the "Self" in IFS), the same section that medical professionals call the "consciousness," sociologists call our "personality," and religious people call the "soul."
The main theory behind IFS therapy is that some of these parts become damaged or injured over the course of our life when bad things happen to us (these bad things being collectively termed "trauma" here), and that other parts of our system jump in to protect the Self from being permanently damaged by this injured part, essentially by burying it deep down in our subconscious so it can't get loose and damage the rest of our Self (at which point that part becomes an "exile" in the lingo of IFS therapy). There are two types of these protectors: ones called "managers" that are proactive (that is, they work overtime to prevent any future trauma from ever occurring), and ones called "firefighters" that are reactive (that is, they only go to work after new trauma has occurred, doing anything it has to in order to put out the "fire" of shame, loneliness, worthlessness and terror that the trauma induces in us).
So, IFS therapy says, if we engage in bad behavior that we don't like but feel powerless to stop, whether that's proactive bad behavior (like giving unwanted advice, being a pushover, or even obsessing too much on therapy) or reactive bad behavior (like substance abuse, rage at small offenses, or even suicide), what we're actually seeing is our managers and firefighters still working overtime to protect an exile from trauma that ended sometime in our past; and that to end the bad behavior, you need to identify these parts, have compassion for them, thank them for protecting you, but gently convince them that the crisis is now over and they can ratchet back down in intensity to "peacetime status." That is, you're not trying to get rid of any of the parts, because they all as a collective group make up your personality (literally your Self in IFS), and there's nothing inherently bad about any of them (the part of your brain that wants to engage in substance abuse, for example, is ironically often the same part of your brain that worries about self-care); you're simply trying to convince these parts that the emergency is now over, that the trauma you experienced in the past is now done and finished, and that all your parts can now go back to living in quiet harmony, including those long-dormant exiles whose very existence you had forgotten about for decades.
This particular newest book on the subject was written by an active IFS therapist, and it's clear in her stories that she started facilitating IFS sessions mainly because she was an IFS patient at first, and had such a breakthrough in her understanding of herself that she felt compelled to make a professional career out of it. This seems to be how a lot of people are coming to IFS therapy these days, frankly, by becoming converts after having it work profoundly in their own life; and this especially gets interesting when you realize that it's a form of IFS that's being used in the absolutely brand-new, still cutting-edge "psychedelics therapy" that's starting to legally happen in the state of Washington right now, where so-called "miracles" are happening in thousands of people at the moment, such as someone who's been an alcoholic for decades doing just a single IFS/psychedelics therapy session and then suddenly starting the next day never craving a drink ever again. That sounds like dubious snake oil when heard out of context, but is quite believable if you agree with the theories being espoused in IFS, and I've seen it work enough in my own life to be a believer myself; although to be fair, I want to acknowledge that there are a few critics and a lot of skeptics these days too when it comes to IFS, and that it's worth acknowledging that IFS therapy is still new enough to not have a proven track record that can be reliably duplicated by anyone in any situation who wants to, a sorta fundamental bedrock of the scientific process that needs to be achieved before anything can be said to have "been proven to work."
So, take it all with a grain of salt, and go into IFS therapy being rational and curious, not with the blind devotion of the faithful; but certainly I encourage anyone who's into therapy to try out IFS therapy, and this slim (<150 pages) and plainly written guide is a great place to start, one that not only explains the entire process clearly but also uses some funny and insightful pop-culture references as metaphors that I haven't seen any other IFS book so far do. (Particularly helpful here is Kennedy's comparison of manager parts to the fictional middle manager Dwight Schrute from The Office: both take their job very seriously [often to the point of comical intensity], both relish being in control [often to the consternation of everyone around them], and both spring into action heedlessly during times of crisis [often leading to the situation getting worse instead of better]). It's both a theory and a therapy that deserves a close look by anyone wrestling with self-destructive behavior, especially since its conclusions are starting to overlap with unrelated other contemporary researchers in fields like neuroplasticity, healthy aging, and physical exercise, and this informative book is a great place to start your journey. ...more
2023 reads, #81. For the sake of ethical disclosure, let me mention upfront that I was the editor of this book, and was paid to make it read the way i2023 reads, #81. For the sake of ethical disclosure, let me mention upfront that I was the editor of this book, and was paid to make it read the way it now does, so my thoughts of course will be biased because of this, which you should keep in mind when reading my review. That said, I rather enjoyed this small children's book that covers the basic issues of personal finance (how to save money, how to budget, how to invest, how loans work, etc.), told through the filter of two preteen kids who one day discover a time machine in the back woods behind their house, and end up visiting Founding Father Benjamin Franklin right on the eve of him publishing his 1758 The Way to Wealth.
We were careful to keep the language in a style that will be understandable and enjoyable for fellow preteens from 8 to 12, so it's a testament to Simbert's financial skills that he was able to take sometimes complicated subjects (such as the concept of interest rates and why they change from one loan to another) and make them understandable for even most third-graders and then going up from there. It's written in what will perhaps be perceived as an old-fashioned style, which is why it's getting 4 stars instead of 5 -- like all good Victorian children's books as well, the children on display here are always deferential to and obedient of all the adults in their lives, and display a "gee whiz!" attitude about virtually every subject they come across that is a little out of step with the contemporary mores of 21st-century children's literature. But as long as you have kids who don't mind that more formal style of characterization, there are a lot of good lessons to be learned here about financial prudence, gratification delay, how the early bird gets the worm, and all kinds of other practical wisdom still to be gleaned from the writings of this centuries-old inventor and statesman. It comes warmly recommended in this spirit. ...more
2023 reads, #71. I wish this book would've existed when I was 18 years old, and that some well-meaning relative had bought it for me as a high-school 2023 reads, #71. I wish this book would've existed when I was 18 years old, and that some well-meaning relative had bought it for me as a high-school graduation gift; for it's not only a very well-done Personal Finance 101 primer, full of practical advice you can start doing right this second even if you have almost no money and no income, but author Anna Jo Beck spends an equal amount of time explaining why you should care about personal finance, even if you're an 18-year-old art major and anti-consumerist social activist, which was exactly what I could've used back in my young "my credit score doesn't matter because I'm never going to buy one of your bougeoise fucking McMansions in the first place" phase. It's best to think of this short, well-written guide in this way, as a gift to the young antifa in your own life, to help explain to them why they should be starting a Roth IRA as soon as possible anyway. ...more
2023 reads, #69. I've had several of my nonfiction freelance clients rave about this 2017 book by hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, so I thought it'd 2023 reads, #69. I've had several of my nonfiction freelance clients rave about this 2017 book by hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, so I thought it'd be worth reading just so I'd have a better understanding of where they're coming from when they mention a title like this. I had expected it to be like those other "guiding principles" books by rich and famous C-level executives -- that is, just a bunch of sloppily written nonsense, one-paragraph Instagrammy platitudes dashed off in their phone's Notes app during bathroom breaks -- so I was surprised and pleased to learn that it's an actual real book of philosophy, always logical and always smart, that made even me look at the struggle to achieve personal success in a new way I hadn't thought of before. (Perhaps his greatest insight here is simply that the fundamental difference between people who succeed at their goals and those who don't is whether you're able to overcome your fears -- about failing, about being publicly humiliated, about losing things in your life because of this failure -- which he essentially defines as "moral courage" and states is the ground-floor hurdle you must get past before you deal with anything else, when it comes to any success you might want to have in life.)
That said, he's also an unapologetic believer in that list of things I call "Stuff That Logically Everyone Should Be Into But For Some Reason Only Creepy Straight White Males Are Into" -- such as the importance of personal accountability, the benefits of meritocracy, and the wisdom of the philosophy known as Stoicism -- so this book is bound to rub many people the wrong way, no matter how smart and practical his actual advice is here. (For one glaring example, he states that at his hedge fund brokerage, anytime a mistake is made, it's determined who specifically made that mistake, and then the person is specifically called out for making the mistake, with Dalio claiming that the person doesn't actually get in trouble as long as they demonstrate that they learned a lesson from the mistake, but with all of us out here in the real world knowing exactly how such "promises" usually play out in a corporate atmosphere.) So while I found this book informative and interesting, I can't in good conscience give it 5 stars, because I know that there's going to be a huge amount of people who will read a book like this and have only the reaction, "What an entitled piece of shit THAT guy is." You probably know in advance whether you're this type of person or not, so let your own intuition guide you when it comes to whether or not to read this book yourself. ...more
2023 reads, #66. This is one of a series of literary advice books I'm reading this year, not for helping my own writing but rather in the attempt to b2023 reads, #66. This is one of a series of literary advice books I'm reading this year, not for helping my own writing but rather in the attempt to become a better editor of other people's writing. In this case, even author Debra Dixon admits that she just sort of stumbled across the main insight that drives this book, when after reading some writing guides herself, she realized that basically all three-act plots boil down to a person wanting something (goal), for a specific reason (motivation), but that there's something stopping them from getting it (conflict). Unfortunately, though, this is like a lot of modern nonfiction books, in that Dixon doesn't really have anything more to say about the subject than this, or certainly not enough to fill more than a blog entry; so for her 200-page version of this theory, she just basically describes these three parts in nauseating detail, meaning that there's not really any reason to actually buy and read this once you've heard her main premise. (Also, I have to admit that it bothered me that Dixon chose almost exclusively genre books and movies to illustrate her principles, showing us only how they apply to over-the-top stories like crime thrillers and romance novels; for someone who wants us to pay 20 bucks to hear one paragraph of useful information, I would've expected her to also show her readers how this structure can be applied to character-heavy literary fiction MFA domestic dramas, where these steps often are not nearly as readily apparent.) There are good ideas being discussed here; but now that you've heard those ideas, there's absolutely no reason to actually buy the book, which is an unfortunate truth about a huge amount of 21st-century nonfiction titles. Buyer beware. ...more
2023 reads, #64. Many men get to their late-middle-aged years like I currently am (I'm 54 this year) and still obsessively think about the natural int2023 reads, #64. Many men get to their late-middle-aged years like I currently am (I'm 54 this year) and still obsessively think about the natural interest and curiosity they had when younger regarding kinky sex, which has still stayed with them all this time because they had actually been quiet suburban husbands in those years and never actually had a chance to have kinky sex. Would they have enjoyed it? Would they have been any good at it? Would it have changed their entire life trajectory? And thus does this lead many middle-aged men to actually try it in their forties and older, for better or for worse. I, on the other hand, as a professional artist for most of my youth (and a paid sex columnist for a few years of that), got to sow all my wild oats back in those salad days, and thus no longer have a curiosity for it; so I instead have an obsessive fascination with the stock market, and ask myself all the same "what if" questions about it that most fiftysomething men ask about the idea of being in an orgy.
I just thought about it again this week, in fact, when a character in a novel I'm editing right now turned out to be a day trader himself; so on impulse, I jumped over to Amazon right that moment and bought the Kindle version of the number-one absolutely highest rated book out of their entire system on the subject of day trading. That turned out to be the unwieldy titled Trading Experts Presents Getting Started: A Beginner's Guide to the Stock Market, Step 1, by Bennett Robert Zamani and Matthew Pryzby (although to be clear, it's Zamani who actually wrote this, which you can tell because he wrote it in first person; his co-founder of the educational group "Trading Experts" I think is just included because both of them likely came up with the lessons). And folks, let me tell you, it was one of the more fascinating books I've read in some time, although in many cases not for the reasons Zamani and Pryzby want it to be.
Just to be clear about the logistics, it's actually one massive book they're offering here, for a total price of $36; but they've split it up into 12 small books that are $3 apiece, I think because their main purpose is as giveaways at the educational program they run through their website, and I imagine are also used as a "lead magnet" for their popular newsletter. This first one doesn't actually go that much into the nuts and bolts of trading itself, but instead talks a lot about the fundamentals of being a trader when it comes to personality, focus, the habits you need to develop, the things you need to unlearn from watching stock market shows on cable television, etc. For example, an early basic thing I learned is that "day trading" is not actually a general term for anyone who trades stocks from home during the day, like I thought it was; it actually means specifically a trader who will buy a stock in the morning and then sell it that same day before the markets close. Trading Experts, on the other hand, teaches "swing trading," which is where you learn through math and statistics when to determine that a stock's value is about to "swing up" to a new level (at which point you buy it), and when it's about to "swing down" back to a low level (at which point you sell it), a process that can sometimes take weeks or even months.
It's full of very useful, very practical advice, and it's easy to see why it still has the astonishing average score of 5 out of 5 at Amazon, despite there now being thousands of reviews posted. But what's funny and fascinating is that it still can't help but be such a naked glimpse of the "Finance Bro" world that constitutes Trading Experts' core customer base, all those incels and meninists and Boiler Room dudes who gather at places like r/WallStreetBets and follow Jim "Mad Money" Cramer like a god, guys who use the word "beast" as a verb, who always refer to stocks as women and then always say things about those women that are borderline criminal ("I fucked AMZN in the ass like the bitch she is!!!!"), who do shit like buy million-dollar sports cars and then get the interior all gunked up with Cheetos dust from their pudgy little no-class fingers. Zamani very admirably trashes Finance Bro culture himself in his book, saying among other things that you will never be a success if you're buying what everyone else is buying, that arrogance about being "the smartest one in the room" pretty much 100% guarantees a giant loss, and that there's no way you can compound your profits if you keep pulling out cash to bling-bling up your life; yet he also tells us with pride about the Aston-Martin he bought at 22 as a college graduation present just because he felt like it, and makes it clear that he primarily sees the world in terms of "winners" (people like him and his friends) and "losers" (anyone who doesn't follow his advice).
It's such this riveting glimpse into Finance Bro culture, one Zamani I think doesn't realize he's giving us, where like the poker world pretty much every term for every single thing you can do has a slang term that has nothing to do with the actual activity, so that people like Zamani and his friends can rattle off these monologues that sound like gobbletygook to everyone else and thus exclude all of us from their little elite circle (and I mean a literal elite circle, one they run through their website and that costs people hundreds of dollars a month to join, and that they literally named "The Alpha Chat," sheeeeeeeesssshhhh, bro, c'mon). It's also telling that the book has so many grammatical errors that it feels like a ten-year-old wrote it, because that's part of the Finance Bro mystique too; because this bro is making too much money to worry about fucking commas, bro, which is why you should trust all the advice this particular bro is giving you. That's brilliant and evil in equal measures simultaneously, and a better historical record of our times than a thousand Trump indictment documents added together.
I want to be very clear about this, that the book itself actually has incredibly smart and insightful things to say about the subject of unlicensed home stock trading (which turns out is the general term for it, "unlicensed trading," because if you want to trade stocks on behalf of someone else for a fee, you have to get a literal license from the SEC to do so, a rule not coincidentally invented three years into the Great Depression), and I absolutely plan on using this 12-book series as my initial rabbit hole into actually trying out stock trading for the first time later this winter. (Currently I'm busy training to get a formal certification in traditional academic editing, so that I can start taking on things like doctoral dissertations and medical books that pay five times as much as what I'm currently making as a freelancer, but one infuriatingly tedious thing at a time, I suppose.) But even if you have no interest in stock trading at all, this first book that only touches on the technical topics of trading is such an amazing read anyway, a chance to crawl up inside the head of one of these Jordan Peterson-loving, Stoicism-reading, Joe Rogan-listening, Tim Ferriss-quoting BROOOOS and see all the fucked-up shit going on up there. It comes recommended in that spirit if nothing else, and as an added bonus will actually teach you how to become quite a successful swing trader too. AND THEN YOU CAN MAKE AAPL YOUR BITCH, BRO!!!!!!!1!! ...more
2023 reads, #42. Digested as a synopsis through the summarizing service Blinkist. A kind of cartoonishly simplistic advice guide for writing novels (d2023 reads, #42. Digested as a synopsis through the summarizing service Blinkist. A kind of cartoonishly simplistic advice guide for writing novels (did you know that your readers will identity more with your hero if they can get a sense of what's going on inside your hero's head?), whose entire marketing gimmick is that author Lisa Cron occasionally throws in, "And this has been proven by science!" Neither a satisfying writing guide nor a satisfying look at the human brain....more
2023 reads, #32. Digested as a synopsis through the summarizing service Blinkist. In fact, this is my first week on Blinkist, and one of the things I 2023 reads, #32. Digested as a synopsis through the summarizing service Blinkist. In fact, this is my first week on Blinkist, and one of the things I only realized today is that sometimes your automated playlist in the app can suddenly switch over to "recommended listens," where suddenly it's Blinkist's algorithms that are picking new 15-minute book summaries then automatically starting to play them on your phone while you're out on a walk. That's how I ended up accidentally listening to a Seth Godin title today, a marketing pioneer who I have this very complicated relationship with. Initially one of the early intellectual gurus (i.e. "thought leaders") of the Startup Age, along with, oh, let's see, productivity obsessives like Merlin Mann and cultural publications like Boing Boing, I really dug his first several books when they originally began appearing in the early '00s, giving a kind of blueprint as to how to promote and sell the bizarrely science-fictiony products and services that were starting to emerge out of the first big wave of online innovators of the '90s "Dot Com era," as they transitioned into the "Web 2.0" of Google, Facebook, Twitter and the like.
But as the years have continued and that entire community then became an industry, then a juggernaut, then eventually a sour toxin slowly poisoning our entire society, Godin and his "you can sell anything with enough clever bullshit" antics has started leaving more and more of a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm starting to look back at his in-hindsight sometimes very morally sketchy advice as maybe one of the things that was actually making America start to come apart at the seams in these years, along with an increasingly draconian tech industry that used Godin's smart-alecky thoughts about how you can sell anything with a good enough yarn to start forcing more and more evil things onto their customers, and along the way financing a series of extreme right-wing politicians vowing to make it easier and easier for these draconian companies to operate in such a manner. Is it fair to lump Godin in with all of this? Maybe or maybe not, as is the following, that I seemingly can't hear Godin's name anymore without conjuring up the putrid little pig-face of Nazi higher-up and propaganda master Heinrich Himmler, whose audacious acts like the deliberately terrifying design of Gestapo uniforms and strategically far-away locations of concentration camps is nothing but a highly effective early form of modern 21st-century marketing. If you read one of Godin's early-'00s books now with the specific mindset that you want to do something evil with what you're learning, they're actually kind of terrifying reads, which is why I would not have deliberately picked this 2004 book's inclusion in my Blinklist booklist if their algorithms hadn't thrown it in without me noticing. There's a bunch of these kinds of books at Blinkist, to be honest, from these always-be-grinding "side hustle/startup years" of the '00s and '10s, and they're starting to make me see these years now here in the '20s in a whole new light....more
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