I wouldn’t recommend against reading it, but it does not have the density of wisdom and insight which you might expect from reading other major works of philosophy.
Wind and Truth Review
Entire subplots of the book read like anachronistic polemics on mental health, and the result is a robbing of depth from most of the characters who powered the series’ earlier installments.
Buddhist Monastic Traditions of Southern Asia
Reading Buddhist Monastic Traditions of Southern Asia is most interesting for its comparisons: to Chinese Buddhism, of course, but also to Christian, European monastic traditions, and to the tenets, rules, and commandments of other religions.
Samuel Review
In reading these texts as books, rather than as selected vignettes and parables, we experience a rather different, more historical, more complex story than the excerpts which exist in the popular understanding convey.
The Book of Memory Review
Medieval scholars had a wiser perspective not just on memory, but on what we might today call “knowledge work” as a whole. In their view, simply reading a book was a useless exercise.
Worn Review
This is not a history of clothing, of fabric, its manufacturing, its properties, or its evolution. It is an unnuanced screed incoherently stitching together fragments of grievance politics and pet causes into a disjointed fabric that reads like a collection of opinion pieces written for a socialist periodical.
Japanese Tales of Times Past Review
I did not read all thousand-plus stories, but I was intrigued by the collection, and came across a selection of ninety stories from the Japanese parts of the original anthology recently chosen and translated by Naoshi Koriyama and Bruce Allen.
Ruth Review
It focuses on individuals and intimate relationships, specifically women, in contrast to the immediately preceding books, and with a very different feel from the family relationships explored in earlier books.
The History of English (Podcast) Recommendation
Begun in 2012, the podcast is a history podcast about the English language, although it takes dozens of episodes for the host, Stroud, to reach the advent of the oldest English dialects from the start of the proto-Indo-European language.
Arthurian Romances Review
This is interesting from a historical perspective for its indirect insights into the cultural norms and beliefs of the French court at the time, but does not deliver the insight into the “authentic” form and function of the ancient Arthurian legends I sought.
IGC Publishing 