Follow me on twitter: @doylelb4
Eating babies was a slow-clap moment for darkness. Beyond that....
Blood Meridian IMO is his pinnacle book... That said, ...talk about blood-letting. Be interesting to see if there's a novel out there that has more deaths in it than this one on a per-page basis. war novels included.
Follow me on twitter: @doylelb4
Bought a book for my wife for her birthday... and she didn't read it.
If I'm gonna spend money - someBODY is gonna read it!
So I read it.
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.
I liked it. I'd give it a solid 8/10.
This is going to sound really strange - but it's been described as Agatha Christie, Groundhog Day, and Quantum Leap put into a blender.
Right!?... doesn't seem like it could work. But it's solid.
Murder Mystery - which I like.
And - for those that watched the TV Series "Dark" (3 seasons)... you might like this one.
"For I am a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Bloody Mary, full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails. Pray for me now and at the hour of my death, which I hope is soon. Amen." - Sterling Archer
"Don't spray that urine on my sons window. If you want a dollar for doing nothing, walk to Canada." - Malory Archer
“Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.” - Lemony Snicket
Recently started reading The Richest Man In Babylon which many of the top financial gurus credit as an eye-opening book that can teach anyone to be better with money. The cool part is that it isn’t a direct financial advice book but it teaches its lessons through stories which seems to make it easier to digest.
I’ve always been the type to just work as hard as I can so I don’t have to pay close attention to my finances but I’m at a point in my life now that my time is more valuable than my money. So I’m trying to find ways to make my money work for me. So far this book seems to be a good start.
Finally getting around to reading the classic Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
Probably not the best book to be reading in today’s global climate. The parallels to some of what we are going through are terrifying.
Also recently finished Blink by Malcom Gladwell. Such an interesting glimpse into the human mind. Will definitely be reading a few more of his books
I have gotten thru a lot of books in the past bit.
Currently reading CROSSROADS by Kaleb Dahlgren one of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash survivors.
Up after that is The Game.
Prior to that I had read Grant Fuhrs book, and a couple of Bob Mackenzie books. The Bob books were meh.
ESPN Roto 10 team
24 man roster (+3 IR) - Keep 20 - Daily settings
Start 3C, 3LW, 3RW, 5D, 2G, 1UTIL
G,A,PTS, +/-, PIM, PPA, PPG, D PTS - W, SV, SV%
C- Zegras, Rossi, Carlsson, Fantilli, Norris
RW- Batherson, Michkov, Quinn, Perfetti(C,LW), Foerster, Kakko
LW- BTkachuk, Stutzle(C), McTavish(C), Benson
D- Mintyukov, Sanderson, LHughes, Clarke, Drysdale, Korchinski
G- Wolf, Askarov, Wallstedt
IR-
IR-
IR-
Picks in 2024/25 1, 2, 4, 5
Picks in 2025/26 rounds 1,3,4,4
Totally love Gladwell's style of writing 4T2. I know there are some who challenge the veracity of his data collection... but I'm not reading it as gospel, just as a glimpse into some cool insights around human behaviour.
Recently finished off some Indian classics (Dhammapada, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Autobiography of a Yogi) and just stocked up for summer doing a deep dive into Ram Dass' work (Be Here Now, Be Love Now, Still Here) after reading his killer book "Paths to God". Can't wait to sink my teeth into the summer lineup which also includes the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Ghandi's autobiography. (Both of which I've never read before)
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius was a pretty cool insight into a special period of human history. Some really elegant writing/musings if you enjoy a bit of poetry in your prose.
Death by Sadhguru was super compelling (although dense AF) but he does win the internet for best title subscript (Death: A book for all those who shall die) lol.
Will also add that for anyone interested in systems/social impact/design both Boylston's Designing with Society and Escobar's Pluriversal Politics were jam-packed with enjoyable goodness and insights.
RHRS, Yahoo, 12-team, Roto
PQMC, Yahoo, 12-team, Keep 11, H2H
Taro Tsujimoto Draft League, Fantrax, 6-team, pts-only (*2018 draftees or later only)
Hanson Bros., Fantrax, 10-Team, Keep 8, weighted scoring
Black & Blue, Fantrax, 12-Team, Dynasty, H2H weighted
The Dream Team League, Fantrax, 14-Team, Dynasty, H2H
On Frozen Ponds, Fantrax 10-Team, Dynasty, Roto
"When I do not know who I am I serve you, and when I do know who I am, you and I are one." - Hanuman-ji
I too visited Brave New World during the pandemic. Huxley's philosophy is rather interesting. I think we are more apt to think of Orwell's more overt dystopia, and ignore Huxley's, which is a dystopia curated to meet our wants/needs/desires and avoid our pains/struggles/angsts such that most of us wouldn't actually want to leave that dystopia. You could even argue that relative to our more primitive lives we are already living in a version of that in Western Society. And you can also see that we are so clearly headed further in that direction. Less thought crime (although versions of that exist in some other nations) and more thoughtless.
Of course, I also found Brave New World a little too bilateral. He framed things as there really being only really two paths: that of the savage and that of the civilized. You could plug into the matrix or unplug but you cannot have both. Maybe that's where we wind up but I cannot help but feel there's a third, tricky to achieve path, where you capture parts of both worlds. It's what we should all be striving for. We shouldn't want to completely dissociate from our humanity even if it can create pain, loss, and other of our uglier human emotions. We should embrace those aspects of who and what we are, controlling them when we can, but accepting the flaws for their unavoidability. We should also use technological advances to curate or eradicate parts of the human experience that are truly abhorrent like famine, childhood disease, and even things like taxes and shopping for which the human brain did not directly evolve to navigate.
But one must also be mindful of the landmines that come from steering too far in either direction. Become overconsumed by the rat race or social media, etc. and one is neglecting other basic human needs for which we evolved like family/community/tribe and being hijacked by baser evolutionary impulses that come without the implicit attachment. We can also become detached from our environment or lose perspective for the impact that we have. So we must also have the wisdom to intentionally venture away from the easy life because we are evolved to overcome struggle and not having any leads to it's own anguish. It's strange, but we should want the privilege to not experience pain, but the wisdom to know we require a certain amount of it.
You can also go too far towards the natural. And suddenly you lose out on the benefits of the technological knowledge the human species has amassed. Go out and live in the woods by yourself and see how long you can actually survive. The human animal is one that requires technology to survive.
It's a road with many pitfalls and no true road map, although the human species has long tried, but unlike Huxley's seeming conclusion in Brave New World, there is actually a third path that does not end in folly. Or at least that's what the optimist in me believes. I found some of his other work to be more balanced. For instance, he offers a bunch of different perspectives in "Eyeless in Gaza", of course he takes until the end of the book to present what appeared to me his version of the "correct perspective" and of course it was interesting that it was a religious one.
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I find Gladwell tremendously entertaining. I've read all his books, and listened to all his podcasts. Of course, he is also so often wrong about things, but if you go into it thinking that he is going to make a compelling argument for something that is almost certainly not true, then it is extremely fun to use that as a launching off point for thinking about what might actually be true or be closer to the truth.
Started reading (well, listening on audtobook) Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (author of the Martian). About a third through and it's sooo good so far.
Reviving this thread a little bit to see what people might be reading now. I just got into the Gray Man series. The first book was excellent, and the second book was great. The third was disappointing. I'm just starting the fourth book, but I would recommend the series so far.
Writer of the weekly Top 10 column.
12-team Keeper pool, straight points for forwards & dmen. Goalies get: 2 points per win, 3 per shutout, 1 point per assist & 1 point per shootout loss.
League champ in 2013, 2015, 2018, 2020 and 2022.
Top 8 forwards, 5 dmen and 2 goalies count.
We keep 15 players (any position) plus two rookies.
Forwards: Panarin, Ovechkin, Kopitar, Stamkos, Tuch, Rust, Marchessault, Pavelski, Miller, Bertuzzi, Stone, Kakko, Brown, Stankoven, Kovalenko
Defence: Hedman, Fox, Matheson, Thrun, Jiricek
Goalies: Kochetkov, Talbot, Vasilevskiy, Campbell, Schmid
The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan
12 team H2H Most Cats Wins; Keep 6/winner keeps 7; G A PPP +/- SHP SOG HIT BLK PIM // W SV GAA SV% SHO
3 C, 3 LW, 3 RW, 6D, 2G, 5 bench
C - McDavid, Crosby, Tavares, Hertl
LW - DeBrincat, Boldy, Lafreniere
RW - Meier, Miller, Boeser, Nichushkin
D - Dobson, Karlsson
G - Jarry, Luukkonen