Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

The Varieties of Religious Experience is a 1907 book by psychologist William James. I first came across James in Richard Wiseman’s book Rip It Up in which Wiseman talked about James’ beliefs in behaviourism, a subject which much evidence is now converging on.

James was also interested in religion as well and gave a series of lectures in 1901/1902, which formed this book. He focuses on direct experiences – that is to say the people who not only talked to god, but god talks back to them.

It was tough going. I didn’t find the language a problem but the subject matter is heavy and following the points made was at time difficult, even though each case was well illustrated by anecdotes.

It was interesting that he briefly mentioned the rise of atheist churches in the form of the flourishing Ethical Societies that were on the rise at the time. From Comte’s Religion of Humanist to the Sunday Assemblies currently sweeping the world, it’s interesting to see how the wheel turns.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is James Joyce’s first novel. As a consequence, his literary style is still developing and as a consequence, large segments of this novel are understandable.

It follows the adventures of Stephen Dedalus, later to appear in Ulysses, throughout his young life.

The best bit is the fire and brimstone preaching. I’ve never heard a preacher having a proper go at it, so the description in this was brilliant. It goes into so much detail about how the tortures are so bad, how the flame never cools and how you never acclimatise to the torment. Scary stuff!

Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care Is Wrong is a book by David Goldhill about the American healthcare system.

Their healthcare is comparable to that provided by the NHS. However we rank better because we spend only a third of the money the US does. Someone told me they spend more tax money than we do, even before the insurance costs, though I do not have a source for that.

Goldhill points out a number of problems, some common across all healthcare systems, others specific to America:

• Holistic care, phsycholical factors in recovery and control of infections are often overlooked – for example making the ward look nice, keeping records electronically and emptying the bins before they overflow.
• Insurance systems do not make sense because healthcare is not a risk, it is an inevitability.
• There are incentives to take medication – you can take statins to lower your blood pressure, or you can lead a healthy and active lifestyle. Your insurance pays for the former but not the latter.
• There is little focus on cost in insurance-based systems.
• 68% of hospital beds in America are provided by non-profit hospitals, yet they do not produce better results than for-profit ones.
• Medical errors, hospital-acquired infection and over-treatment kill as many people as many major medical conditions

His solution is to crap the insurance system and replace it with a loan based system. A typical American will spend around $1,300,000 on healthcare over their life-system so Goldhill suggests giving them that as fund, with a small insurance system for catastrophic conditions that cost more (though he argues nobody would charge more in a market-based system).

On a tangent, he also talks about how state assistance to buy a house actually helps rich home-owners rather than first-time buyers. I blogged about this in June.

Reading it, it made me glad we have the NHS. Of course, it may be a case of the grass is always greener where you live (which is now a thing) as the NHS is proving highly ineffective for me at the moment. Overall, as I said at the start though, we probably get the better deal spending far less on health care for a slightly better life expectancy.

Why Not Eat Insects? is a 1885 book by Vincent M. Holt. Surprisingly enough, it is a book advocating the consumption of insects. And why not? They are nutritious, tasty and plentiful.

He starts off by tackling the prejudice against eating them. We think it is a weird yet people all over the world do it. We worry that they will have fed on the wrong stuff, but this is unfounded. Most insects are vegetarians. Compare this to pigs. They will eat anything. Lobsters too. Lobsters are often caught wild and so you have no idea what they have eaten; putrified dead fish being one of their favourite meals.

He then goes on to suggest how to catch, prepare and cook a variety of insects including snails, moths, woodlice, caterpillars and others. He even concludes with some sample menus you could use for a dinner party!

It’s quite a small book; I got through the entire thing in about 45 minutes. It is also a reproduction and suffers from some flaws in the process, so is perfectly readable.

Ah foot the ball. And is there any better place to enjoy the beautiful game than the beautiful city of Ankh-Morpork? Probably, though the idea of the wizards of Unseen University putting together a football team is definitely not one to be missed. That is the narrative of Discworld 37, Unseen Academicials.

It was okay. The Moist von Lipwig novels have been really good and this was not as laugh-out-loud funny as those. Also, there was some Rinsewind, but not enough. It’s like Pratchett was teasing me.

What was this book about?

I was told it was about the bombing of Dresden, but most of the story was about a guy called Billy Pilgrim who could travel through time and spent some of his life living in a zoo on an alien planet.

You would think that you would get some sense from the linear story telling. However, when you can travel backwards and forwards through time, that quickly becomes irrelevant. It’s enough to drive a man to suicide. So it goes.

Don’t get your hopes up, this is not the long-awaited gory details of myself and Yvonne Mcgruder in the back of a beaten up Ford Fiesta. It’s the title of Richard Branson’s autobiography.

It’s a short and sweet book – I got through the whole thing in a day. He is one crazy bastard. When he isn’t almost killing himself on boats or hot air balloons, which he is a lot, he is getting arrested (though only in his younger days) and indulging in free love. Though he also appreciates keeping an alcohol-free clear head when he needs to.

The length means you don’t get the intricate detail that something like the Steve Jobs biography goes into, but does keep it moving. Virgin is a company that has been so close to going under so many times. I’ve read quite a few other books of other businessmen and none of them have such a track record of death-dodging than Virgin. Of course, it could be that Branson is just more honest. He talks openly about marijuana, sex and criminal activity, but maybe everyone else is up to it too. I can’t see Alan Sugar with a spliff but who really knows.

It’s also quite dated now. Virgin has done a lot since 1998 when the book came out and it feels like half a story. It doesn’t offer business insight in the same way that Like a Virgin does, but it does make for an entertaining read.

Anyone who does not want to fly combat missions is sane enough to fly combat missions. That is the ironic narrative of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, a novel set during the Second World War.

I found it really slow going at first. Funny, but slow moving. It follows the life of Yossarian, as well as a large cast of other characters, as they attempt to survive through the war. As the story goes on it opens up into a dark, satirical and ultimately very funny story. If you have that kind of sense of humour. Which I do.

The impossible but simultaneously inevitable situations that Milo Minderbinder finds himself in, the idea of someone being promoted just so their name would be Major Major and Captain Black’s endless series of loyalty oaths are just absurd enough to be ridiculous and yet somehow plausible in the crazy world we live in.

The Rosie Project is a novel about a guy named Don and his struggles with relationships. He falls somewhere atypically on the autism spectrum, probably Asperger syndrome.

It was a novel I had looked forward to reading, so I was pleased when it made it into my current reading sprint. I identified strongly with the protagonist. He has so many useful ideas like efficient, running his life from a whiteboard and a proper meal schedule. Though with the obvious difference that he is autistic (and doesn’t even realise it) and I’m not.

The ending was predictable and formulaic. Good news, obviously. Have you ever read a novel that doesn’t end like it should? They’re rubbish. Even George R. R. Martin knows deep-down that what he does is awful and wrong. Gripping, but rubbish.

I had some hopes for this book. Russell Brand and I are superficially alike. That is to say, we both have long tangled hair and a tendency to stand up for justice rather than kowtowing to authority.

However, the revolution that Brand proposes is perhaps-unalterably bound up in a movement towards a religiously-inspired spiritualism. Brand would argue that that is the point. They need to be connected together.

He opens the book with a prayer and talks about his belief in god. Which god you ask? Doesn’t matter. Brand seems to accept all the contradictory claims of various religions as true. But what does that matter when you believe that science cannot explain everything. Especially Consciousness. I’ll be writing to Dan Dennett for my money back then.

Some of the claims drift into the beyond ridiculous. Whether or not you think that the entire working class is being oppressed and knowledge of other alternatives is being carefully controlled and discredited, a group of people doing mediation does not drop a city’s crime rate by 20%. I couldn’t even find the study that Brand was referencing, but you do not need to know that it does not make sense.

That’s the bad stuff though. There is also lots of good stuff in the book.

He writes in an engaging style. It’s entertaining, it slips in and out of poetry and moves seamlessly between the fun and the serious. It is self-aware enough to realise that many will regard Brand as a champagne socialist.

Some of which is contentious. For example, he claims that the US election has been won by the side with the most money. He points out that isn’t claiming this always has happens. It is just that it has happened every time ever so far. Thought provoking, though you could argue that the side with the most support should be able to raise the most money.

Other points are less contentious. Wealth inequality is increasing. We are severely damaging the planet. The currently democratic process fails to engage people. We all know this he states again and again. And we do. That is to say, most people would accept these ideas (though not all). Few would argue that 85 individuals should have the same net worth as 3,500,000,000 others.

Every election we discuss low voter turn-out. People don’t seem to care. Except clearly, people do care about democracy in general. The nation phones into premium rate lines to vote for X-Factor every week. Even I voted in Eurovision. It’s the current political system, a feeling that they have no voice and no power that people are disenfranchised with.

Whether his socialist utopia will work is another question. His experiences with the Buy Love Here project does not bode well, nor does the evidence that human nature is rather unpleasant.

However, at worst you can argue that Brand becomes the reductio ad absurdum to his own ideas. That does not mean he doesn’t have a point.