Books – Page 10 – Cubilone's Dimension

REVIEW: NOT THE FUTURE WE ORDERED: PEAK OIL, PSYCHOLOGY, AND THE MYTH OF ETERNAL PROGRESS

Not the Future We Ordered: Peak Oil, Psychology, and the Myth of Eternal Progress by John Michael Greer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Quick read, rich in information, read on Kindle. John Michael Greer is my recent obsession I discovered through Ran Prieur and the links he posts on his blog.

Having been a regular reader of JMG’s blog The Archdruid Report for a few months now, the content and topic of Not the Future We Ordered didn’t come as a surprise. In short, it’s about how progress is our contemporary “civic religion” and myth; what the psychological impact of living through peak oil and its aftermath will look like in the wider population (surprising and fascinating to read) and what people should be doing to build some foundation for the future and for young people to improve their chances of survival in the future, the current situation being what it is. Made my current desire to go find some land somewhere, cultivate it and develop my hardly existent practical skills even stronger.

Overall, if the topic interests you–it absolutely should–but you’re kind of put off by the fact that JMG is, well, an archdruid, take my advice and allow yourself to be surprised by how eloquent, backed up, bulletproof and to the point his argumentation is. I’m giving this book just three stars out of five because a lot of the information I felt I had already come across in the blog (albeit in the book it was more structured) and because it was short! What can I say? I love me some JMG.

View all my reviews

REVIEW: A NEW EARTH

A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’d been noticing this sitting on varying desks in the American Corner of Sofia City Library for a while now and finally decided to give it a try. I must say that it wasn’t as good as The Power of Now, which I loved and want to return to. It could be because this one I read, while The Power of Now I listened to Eckhart Tolle himself reading, which was an experience in its own right. A New Earth was sort of repetitive and nothing really new was introduced, as if Tolle was contractually obliged to write something but couldn’t come up with anything new. But as I’m writing these words I wonder: what new could there be? I suppose the lesson is and will always be the same – though you can play around with the presentation: awareness is all there is, be wary of the ego in yourself and others, meditate. Maybe my criticism is invalid, then, which wouldn’t however change the fact that I didn’t find it as appealing as The Power of Now. But for you, if you read or listened to this one first, it could – for all I know – work the other way around.

These are two of my favourite bits:

“The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction, its own madness.”

“Many people who are going through the early stages of the awakening process are no longer certain what their outer purpose is. What drives the world no longer drives them. Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they may feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them. Some feel that they inhabit a no-man’s land between two world’s. They are no longer run by the ego, yet the arising awareness has not yet become fully integrated into their lives. Inner and outer purposes have not merged.”

I thought the cover was beautiful too. Here’s something similar I stumbled upon on Tumblr yesterday. Click on the pic for the post.

View all my reviews

REVIEW: TOUGH SHIT

Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first came into contact with Kevin Smith’s work many years ago when I watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back with my old friend George. It took me many more years still to listen to the same friend’s advice and actually watch Clerks, the film that launched the guy into the biz head-first. I did so a few months ago and greatly enjoyed its quirky and hilarious direction and script but also somehow profound message. After that, getting to this book wasn’t a step so far removed, especially since I had marked this as to-read after reading Anelis’ review. This time following her advice, I found it on audiobook form and listened to Kevin Smith narrating his little biography of sorts for almost six hours.

I enjoyed Tough Shit and Kevin Smith’s writing style, just like I enjoyed his first film. I appreciate it when people are this honest about their life and work. There’s something to be said about leaving pretensions this far behind. Sometimes, only sometimes, I thought his style was a little too much like something I would enjoy more if I was still in high school, but this is precisely this man’s appeal. I did laugh out loud at his retelling of the first time he had sex with his wife and the pains of dry-humping, the plane incident, or his experience of what a complete cock Bruce Willis is and what it means to work with such divas of the film industry. Talking about the film industry, I thought it was also a great candid look into the innards of what’s often portrayed as a great monolith of a business. So who am I kidding? I gobbled this shit up, man. I’m not better than that. Thank the gods.

Kevin Smith is equal parts funny, vulgar, down-to-earth, a source of inspiration and a valuable voice reminding you what’s important in life and living out your own role in it, not an imaginary one or somebody else’s. I think it’s time I watched more of his movies or looked into Smodcast.

View all my reviews

REVIEW: YUKIKO’S SPINACH

Yukiko’s Spinach by Frédéric Boilet

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a manga recommended by Daphne a million and a half years ago. I read it in one single-hour sitting on my Kindle, surrounded by unknown Bulgarians in a hotel in Sandanski. They were sleeping in different beds.

I’ll be brief and to-the-point: this was self-reference taken to the extreme. I like it when artists play around with these things, when they break the fourth wall, for example, or whatever the equivalent for texts might be – I’m not feeling creative enough to come up with something better than the incredibly lame “burning the press” – but Monsieur Boilet went over the top. You did, Frédéric. I admit: it was interesting in a way, but in the end I couldn’t help but get the feeling that, were the veneer of pretentious self-reference, such as the sketches, supposedly the inspiration of this comic book, to be removed, there would be nothing left.

No. There would be something left: the small details that made me want to visit Japan (yawn, right?); the cute observations the artist made of Yukiko and masterfully put onto paper, most memorably the mole on her face that reminded him of the geography of some islands in the Pacific the name of which escapes me right now, and its art style, which had me wondering all along: “How did the guy actually make this? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” The answer came at the end as part of the story itself. Or did it?

And to think I usually like this kind of stories… Alas: while reading it, I made the shuddering realisation that, if I chose to write a story or make a comic about something that took place in my own life, a few years ago or maybe even today I might have chosen this oh-so-mysterious-I-wonder-what-really-happened! style of self-reference. *looks around uncomfortably*

But seriously: this looked amazing on the Kindle (see above). Even though I didn’t enjoy the story so much, I would still recommend checking it out if you have one.

View all my reviews

REVIEW: JOURNEY OF SOULS

Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Michael Newton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I believe in reincarnation. There are just too many things going on out there that are inexplicable if you rule out survival of consciousness. And if this book is legitimate, which from the look of it it is, Journey of Souls only adds to the mystery.

A quick word on whether this book is substantial proof for the existence of reincarnation: if you don’t believe in this kind of thing, this book won’t rid you of your skepticism. It’s like the forever-discussed “proof” of the existence of God or not. Atheists would never accept or even recognize “proof” for the existence of God. If you are one yourself, sit down and think what kind of proof would be enough to convince you that God exists, and what other atheists would have to say on the matter. To be fair, respective theists would never accept the proposition that such a thing as proof is in fact necessary, either. Not when faith is the cornerstone of religions in general.

Back to the book. If you’ve ever heard of past life regression through hypnosis, Michael Newton is the guy who apparently first used and popularised the technique.

Nature or nurture? Just your soul feeling adventurous, silly!

To tell you the truth, I imagined it to be better when I downloaded it for my Kindle. In the first paragraph of this review, I mentioned that the book only adds to the mystery. Big time it does: I came out of it more puzzled than enlightened. I disliked some of the questions he asked his hypnotised clients, and the whole after-/before-life system assembled by the info gathered from the tens (hundreds?) of cases used for the book seemed to me too anthropocentric, too much of the existing material world. Apparently there are levels of soul maturity, as well as soul “schools” and soul nurseries or, for lack of a better term, tribes.

Then again, if Journey of Souls reflects what’s actually happening at all, that would mean that it is actually the the human condition that reflects the way things are in the spirit world, not the other way around. It seems plausible; people are souls in meat suits. You don’t stop being a person when you drive a car, do you? Or maybe you become an “enhanced” person given a tool that expands your possibilities. I can see a similar reason for souls wanting to incarnate and indeed, such reasoning is given in the book.

At the end of the day, you can only know for sure if you’ve had a past life regression yourself. Maybe that’s the only way for any of us to be convinced that death is not the end, and maybe only then can we obtain the knowledge we can actually do something with in order to change our lives for the better. Anything else is so many steps removed it’s like reading sex stories expecting to feel what an orgasm feels like second-hand. Errr, I mean… What was I saying before ? Yes; at the very least, if Mr. Newton’s goal was to make me want to be hypnotised to find out my spiritual past, he got that part right.

So what do you say? Is the truth out there or in here?

View all my reviews

REVIEW: THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

If you don’t enjoy being patronised, don’t read this book.

I was thinking the other day: what would you do if you had a negative (and I mean really negative) opinion on a book but by chance happened to come across its author? What would you tell them if they asked you what you thought about their book?

Without the luxury of the internet or reviews or all the other ways we have of expressing a negative opinion on things without having to come into direct contact with their creator, we tend to be more insensitive with our criticism. The medium is the message… What is the message the medium of criticism conveys? That, perhaps, individual works of art can be analysed, praised or attacked as if they existed in a void – as if they weren’t created by people with flaws and feelings. I understand that criticism is necessary in a world as saturated with works of art as the one we live in, if only for us to be able to timidly navigate through this ever-expanding sea of creativity. However, I also believe it’s necessary to look at established institutions a little more, ahem, critically from time to time.

So: should we be writing criticism we wouldn’t be able to say it to the authors’ faces?

I’ll let you ponder that a for a sec.

…

Done? Great! At this point I’ll contradict myself, as I so happily and readily do, and say what I can say from the safety and isolation of my Goodreads account, albeit signed with my real name, a move I would predictably not make if I knew my review would be read by Kate DiCamillo and not get lost in the ego-stroking labyrinth of positive comments and reviews this piece of work has disappointingly received.

This, people, is one of the worst books I’ve ever read.

Terribly obnoxious, annoying, arbitrary characters; events I did not care about reading and that made me feel worse than before (what was up with the cauliflower ears? Come on!); an arrogant, didactic style of writing that’s pretending not to be so but which cannot help but seep through… I’d go on but it’s already been a couple of months since I read it so most of my vitriol has evaporated; that is, I can’t really remember more of the exact reasons I didn’t enjoy this book at all, but what I can tell you is that it managed to solidify itself in my memory as a bad reading experience, one that made me feel uncomfortable, a kind of uncanny sick inside. Maria did warn me, but I just had to sneak a peek at this train wreck… To not make this review longer than it should be, I’ll just say that I’d never read this to my child.

At least it had beautiful illustrations.

View all my reviews

REVIEW: PIHKAL: A CHEMICAL LOVE STORY

Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story by Alexander Shulgin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes you read some books you think everybody should read, if only just so that they can correct their misconceptions on certain things.

Alexander Shulgin was a researcher of psychotropics which he had been inventing in his laboratories and testing on himself for almost half a century. Actually, no; merely calling him that would be like describing J.S. Bach simply as a Baroque musician. If it wasn’t for him, a great many psychoactive compounds, including MDMA, the tremendous potential for psychotherapeutic use of which it was also he who discovered, would have never seen the light of day; people wouldn’t have enjoyed them and found insight in their use… The field as a whole would be much poorer.

In fact, given the prolonged forbidding legal status of the production, distribution and even use for the majority of known psychedelics since the ’60s, without Shulgin there would have hence been next to no research at all in this field of human knowledge and experience we are repeatedly and stubbornly denying ourselves from. He was one of the most important beacons of reason, curiosity and tenderness on this topic, and that is why I wanted to get my hands on PiKHaL: anything written by Sasha is required reading on this subject.

Since it’s a big book and it’s expensive and difficult to get it even used, I tracked it down on .pdf soon after I got my Kindle, which makes it easier to enjoy hard-to-find works like this on digital format. The day after I started reading it, there was news that Shulgin had passed away – at the age of 88 and after inventing and trying hundreds of successful and not-so-successful “drugs”, no less.

Shulgin in this book told his life’s story and how he got interested in the things that made him famous (it has to do with the placebo effect and the power of the mind); how he met his wife, who co-authored this work with him; he described his little psychedelic sessions with friends in a very affectionate and effective way.

In their remote but blessed corner of the universe they tread new ground and wrote all about it. It was epic.

Read this and come back to me mumbling something about wanting to keep it natural and chemicals-free. I dare you.

I’m perfectly aware that I might be getting on your nerves with these Kindle shots. The first two should be easy enough to read if you want to get a feel of what it was like reading these highlight-worthy quotes. But in this last bit the font is too small, and I admit it’s probably way too much effort reading text from those .jpgs. They serve as aesthetic enhancements of the review. Or I could just call them my reviews’ seasonings, like they have in restaurants on every table: complete with salt, pepper, oil, chili perhaps, here in Bulgaria garlic sauce… Optional, but there for you if you’re feeling like it.

I’ll sign off this review with a transcript of the picture above, because I know that sometimes food is best eaten pure.

PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Shulgin)
– Your Highlight on page 208 | location 3183-3185 | Added on Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:20:42

I looked up at him and smiled, showing all my teeth, “I learned long ago that the most dangerous opponent is the one who tells you he hasn’t been near the game in years. He’s the one who’ll wipe the board with you, while apologizing for being so terribly rusty.”
==========
PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Shulgin)
– Your Highlight on page 215 | location 3294-3297 | Added on Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:34:12

“You told me that you invent new psychedelics and that you have a group of people who try them out after you’ve made sure they’re safe and ,/ He interrupted, “Not safe. There is no such thing as safety. Not with drugs and not with anything else. You can only presume relative safety. Too much of anything is unsafe. Too much food, too much drink, too much aspirin, too much anything you can name, is likely to be unsafe.”
==========
PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Shulgin)
– Your Highlight on page 219 | location 3349-3351 | Added on Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:39:51

“Of course, there are many ways to alter your consciousness and your perceptions; there always have been, and new ways will keep being developed. Drugs are only one way, but I feel they’re the way that brings about the changes most rapidly, and – in some ways – most dependably. Which makes them very valuable when the person using them knows what he’s doing.”

And… sorry, I just couldn’t hold myself. Quotes really do a better job at reviewing themselves than I ever could.

PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Shulgin)
– Your Highlight on page 176 | location 2690-2698 | Added on Sunday, 8 June 2014 04:37:06

Sam said, “I don’t know if you realize this, but there are some researchers – doctors – who are giving this kind of drug to volunteers, to see what the effects are, and they’re doing it the proper scientific way, in clean white hospital rooms, away from trees and flowers and the wind, and they’re surprised at how many of the experiments turn sour. They’ve never taken any sort of psychedelic themselves, needless to say. Their volunteers – they’re called ‘subjects,’ of course – are given mescaline or LSD and they’re all opened up to their surroundings, very sensitive to color and light and other people’s emotions, and what are they given to react to? Metal bed-frames and plaster walls, and an occasional white coat carrying a clipboard. Sterility. Most of them say afterwards that they’ll never do it again.” “Jesus! Right now, after what I’ve just gone through, that sounds worse than awful.” “Not all of the research is being done that way, thank God, but too much of it is.” “What a shame,” I said, saddened by the picture, “What a shame!”

View all my reviews

REVIEW: THE BOOK OF THE DAMNED

The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(It’s already been almost three months since I finished this one… just for you to get an idea of how slowly things are making the passover from my life to the ‘mension these days.)

Reading the Book of the Damned on the book-damning device.

Below you will find an assortment of highlights from The Book of the Damned pulled from the clipping file of my Kindle. Convenient, that. You can find the same super-version of the book as the one I read for free on Amazon. I’m still not sure if it’s a best-of, Charles Fort’s collected works, or what… There seems to be at least some content which doesn’t match up with the text found on his four books as found separately.

Anyway, back to the quotes:

The data of the damned. I have gone into the outer darkness of scientific and philosophical transactions and proceedings, ultra-respectable, but covered with the dust of disregard. I have descended into journalism. I have come back with the quasi-souls of lost data. They will march.

—

The power that has said to all these things that they are damned, is Dogmatic Science.

—

All sciences begin with attempts to define. Nothing ever has been defined. Because there is nothing to define. Darwin wrote The Origin of Species. He was never able to tell what he meant by a “species.” It is not possible to define. Nothing has ever been finally found out. Because there is nothing final to find out. It’s like looking for a needle that no one ever lost in a haystack that never was—

—

The novel is a challenge to vulgarization: write something that looks new to you: someone will point out that the thrice-accursed Greeks said it long ago.

—

It may be that in the whole nineteenth century no event more important than this occurred. In La Nature, 1887, and in L’Année Scientifique, 1887, this occurrence is noted. It is mentioned in one of the summer numbers of Nature, 1887. Fassig lists a paper upon it in the Annuaire de Soc. Met., 1887. Not a word of discussion. Not a subsequent mention can I find. Our own expression: What matters it how we, the French Academy, or the Salvation Army may explain? A disk of worked stone fell from the sky, at Tarbes, France, June 20, 1887.

—

My notion of astronomic accuracy: Who could not be a prize marksman, if only his hits be recorded?

—

But what would a deep-sea fish learn even if a steel plate of a wrecked vessel above him should drop and bump him on the nose? Our submergence in a sea of conventionality of almost impenetrable density. Sometimes I’m a savage who has found something on the beach of his island. Sometimes I’m a deep-sea fish with a sore nose.

Charles Fort was a trailblazer. What we call today paranormal or occult, together with all the relevant scientific investigations, in a few words what we’d expect from Mulder and Scully, to a large extent we owe to him. Here’s a guy who lived in the ’20s and researched old copies of Scientific American, Nature and other such periodicals and magazines, looking for the damned, the unexplainable, the excluded. For what good is science, if it only chooses to include to its dogma what it can explain, sweeping under the carpet all that can be used to challenge its grand theories?

Giant, village-sized wheels submerged in the middle of the ocean; periodic rains of fish, frogs in various states of decay and of a gelatinous mass of unknown origin; falling stone discs, as in the quote above; meteors; lights in the sky moving in formation (reported in the 19th century); footprints of impossible creatures; giant hailstones; cannonballs entombed in solid rock, and that’s just a sample.

Reading about these mysterious exclusions was a delight. I love everything that challenges my way of seeing the world and allows me to contemplate alternative explanations for life, the universe and everything. To be fair, some of Fort’s favourite theories were down-right bizarre, such as his insistence on imagining a realm above our own from which all the falling creatures and materials originated – what our own surface world would be, conceptually, for the “deep-sea fish with the sore nose”, as in the last extract I quoted above. The existence of such a place sounds no less ridiculous now than it did in the 1920s, but I think Fort’s point was that his arbitrary explanations were just as good as the official ones offered by the scientific dogma of the time, which our present, widely-accepted, matter-of-fact world theories of today mirror. To be sure, a part – I don’t know how significant – of the excluded, would be possible to include today, but I’m sure that many of the phenomena Fort goes through in his Book of the Damned would be just as inexplicable today as they were in the centuries past.

There are two reasons this book isn’t getting five stars from me. The first one is that it’s twice as long as I think it should have been. I felt that Fort at certain points was simply repeating himself. It’s also possible he was just saying the same thing in a different, more difficult to understand way, and this is precisely the second reason this isn’t getting five stars. Fort’s language and style was very hit or miss. To give you an idea, the quotes I’ve included in this review are some of the easiest parts to understand from the whole book. Others love it. Myself, I can’t say I hate it, but I’m not sure it’s as successful a writing technique as Fort must have hoped for it to be.

The same hit-or-miss-ness is applicable to the book as a whole. I thought it was tremendously interesting and a significant publication that should be studied further and give inspiration to present-day Charles Forts, but I don’t believe the style is for everyone. Why don’t you find out for yourself if it’s right for you, though? It’s free!

View all my reviews

EVS AT SOFIA CITY LIBRARY: GREEN LIBRARY 2014

Originally posted on our EVS at Sofia City Library blog.

We made this video with all our love for the event that was made of love. Library’s a giving tree. Enjoy!We were also on Bulgarian National TV. Unfortunately, I can’t embed the video, so you’ll have to click on the link and watch it there. Here’s another reportage done by TV Evropa – I speak Bulgarian on that one! 😀

The theme song:

Download .mp3

Again, many thanks to Zanda, Maria, Valya and Boryana. You should write something about it too, girls! Post it on the comments and I’ll make it part of the post.

REVIEW: FLUENT IN 3 MONTHS: TIPS AND TECHNIQUES TO HELP YOU LEARN ANY LANGUAGE

Fluent in 3 Months: Tips and Techniques to Help You Learn Any Language by Benny Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a person with the ambition to become a polyglot myself (some would even say that with my 5 languages spoken at different levels of mastery I could already call myself one), I can tell you that Benny Lewis is to a great degree what I would like to become one day. If there ever was a more encouraging person that anybody can do it, he would be it. He managed to learn so many languages – I don’t even remember how many – starting in his early ’20s with Spanish and never ever stopping since.

This book is a collection of his most useful techniques and methods and his unmatched motivational skills. While reading it I was feeling so pumped to learn all the languages I could get my hands on, and he really made it all look so easy! Motivating doesn’t even begin to describe it.

My main problem with his work is that he’s not very precise on what actually being fluent means when talking about becoming fluent in three months, something which other people on the web have commented on too. This is part of his own definition from the book itself:

He continues by saying that fluency in a language is difficult to measure (“there is no absolute, discernirble point you pass when can say, ‘Now I can speak the language fluently.'”) and suggests that for all intents and purposes a B2 level on the Common European Framework, by that standard, should be enough. That’s debatable of course and depends on the needs of every individual learner, and, as a holder of a B2 in German and Spanish myself, I still don’t consider myself fluent in either language; rather, I’d consider myself a competent speaker for everyday situations, but no more.

The book itself in general made me think about what my individual needs and goals about each language I’m learning are and gave me plenty ideas and methods on how to reach them. Its best point was the motivation it gave me and that it helped visualise what I’d really like to do with my language-speaking.

Also, Fluent in 3 Months is the first book I’ve seen as of yet that takes advantage of the possibilities granted by dynamic content – as opposed to traditional, static content found in books – made possible by the web: it has links to articles and resources kept updated by the author, which sort of act as mini-expansion packs for the book, e.g. links to useful services, such as Memrise, italki or Polyglot Club. Benny’s idea is that if you own the book, you should always have access to fresh content which in some cases might not be the same as what’s included in the book, as could be the case for example with the links to language-learning websites.

All this said, I don’t particularly like Benny’s tendency to whore himself out and his advice out behind paywalls on his site. Even if you buy his book as I did and subscribe for the extra content, there’s still a “premium membership” you’ve got to pay if you want to have full access to what he’s written over the past few years. I understand that he’s put a lot of work on all of this and that learning new languages full-time has been his main occupations for the better part of his springtime of youth, but I have to admit that it all rather leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Regardless of this, though, if you’re about to tackle a new language or would love to learn more about how effective language-learning works, Benny is one of the best people out there to turn to, or at least to his work. Again, if you can be skeptical about his method and his general aims in learning lots and lots of languages fluently in a sense, you can’t deny that the guy has a talent of being able to very straightforwardly pump you up and make you feel like even learning Mandarin or whatever else you might think a difficult language could be is a piece of cake and only a matter of dedication. And, in the end, if this book left me with anything very concrete, it’s that dedication and the willingness to forget about shyness and/or other bullshit excuse it’s the only thing that might be stopping us from becoming truly good at – or at least having just the right attitude for – speaking our favourite languages.

View all my reviews