I almost gave up after finishing the first book, but there were enough elements that intrigued me to continue into the second, and I’m sometimes a little stubborn, so I pushed on. I’m glad I persevered.
Genesis Review
It probably sounds terribly sacrilegious, but the God in Genesis feels like a God who is sort of figuring things out as He goes.
Canterbury Tales Review
More even than other historical works, it is a true portal to the past, replete with everything that implies for the historian, the author, the worldbuilder, and the simply curious.
Following the Equator Review
He at times writes of significant matters, but too many chapters are filled by inane diary entries and games played aboard the ship. There just isn’t enough substance to the book to make it worthwhile, especially at some seven hundred pages.
The Invisible Man Review
A useful metaphor it might provide, but that doesn’t absolve the author of the need for plausible impossibility.
Five and Twenty Tales of the Genie Review
The core of Five and Twenty Tales of the Genie is what it means to be a good king, conveyed through a series of parables delivered by the titular mythological figure.
Nicomachean Ethics Review
After reading philosophers’ ideas of morality and ethics from Plato up to Camus, I remain convinced that Aristotle’s core idea – virtue is the mean between two vices – is the most insightful, and the most useful, standard of ethical behavior we as humanity have.
The Brick Moon Review
In 1869, a century before the moon landing, eighty-eight years before Sputnik 1, and one hundred nine years before the first navigational satellite, Edward Everett Hale used a science fiction story to propose launching an artificial satellite into polar orbit to enable anyone, anywhere, to determine their longitude by measuring the satellite’s elevation from the horizon.
War and Peace Review
It luxuriates, meandering through lives and small events that stack up into occasional flashes of intense conflict. Instead of following a central plot thread all the way through in a direct fashion, as a modern novel would, Tolstoy leads the reader on a winding path that, while you’re walking it, can feel unfocused, but that somehow still conveys a sense of progress.
Critique of Pure Reason Review
Written and published in the context of the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason reads, to me, like the philosophical predecessor to Einstein’s Relativity.
