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Showing posts from December, 2024

Review: Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An Identification Guide

Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An Identification Guide by Paul Stamets My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Review: A for Andromeda

A for Andromeda by Fred Hoyle My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Review: Trust

Trust by Hernan Diaz My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book has been on my list for a couple of years, and over the summer, I finally snagged a hardback edition at the excellent Spoonbill Books on Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn. I liked the book—it was a compressed 'New York' by Rutherfurd Edward with a twist. The writing style was clever and engaging. It was a literary piece of 'detection' unravelling the events leading up to and following the Great Crash in 1929. It reminds me of the need for humility in the face of Mr Market . In a classic example of 'self-serving' cognitive bias, we identify our skills when investments go well and blame market weakness and external issues that led to our losses. It wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be, but it was enjoyable and surprising. I gave the book three stars. View all my reviews

Review: The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus My rating: 3 of 5 stars I discovered earlier this year that Albert Camus, alongside George Orwell, was a philosophical and literary influence on Mario Vargas Llosa (see my review of The Call of the Tribe ). He helped move the Peruvian writer/politician from Marxism towards liberalism. Perhaps liberals, like Vargas Llosa and maybe even Albert Camus, are always destined to defeat, like Sisyphus. The Myth of Sisyphus is a collection of writings dealing with philosophy, suicide, and a travelogue of Algiers/Oran in the style of Graham Greene. There is the silence of noon on the Place du Gouvernement. In the shade of the trees surrounding it Arabs sell for five sous glasses of iced lemonade flavoured with orange-flowers. Their cry ‘Cool, cool’, can be heard across the empty square. After their cry silence again falls under the burning sun: in the vendor’s jug the ice moves and I can hear its tinkle." But Vienna sta...

Review: The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews