A Little Happier by Derren Brown – Notes for reassurance – is a short book that builds on his previous book, Happy. The book is about accepting what we can control and focus only on those things instead. He talks about the narratives we tell…
Vaccine Hesitancy by Maya J. Goldenberg – Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science – is a mixed bag for me. What I liked was that she issues with vaccine hesitancy from a philosophical perspective, as this is her background. That was valuable and…
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault – The Birth of the Prison – is a book I had to read for my studies and I’m glad it was a mandatory reading. It is fascinating. Not a light read though and not on a topic that…
Orientalism by Edward Said was written in 1978 and it became a classic. Said’s work is very interesting, based on Foucault’s Concept of power&knowledge (which makes me think I should read Foucault too, as in cover-to-cover). Said points out that the Oriental or Arab is…
The Trouble With Being Born by Emil Cioran, a translation from French by Richard Howard. I reviewed another one of Cioran’s books, A Short History of Decay, in 2019. As last time, I will review the book by sharing quotes that I found most interesting.…
Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire translated by Desmond M. Clarke is a very good edition, with a clear and informative introduction into the subject. I gave the book 4 stars, an average between 5 for translation and 3 for content. Voltaire started to write the…
Humankind by Rutger Bregman – A Hopeful History. Is a book recommended by Harari and I wonder why. The book is not properly researched. His approach is quite simplistic. People are either good or bad. I would have imagined everybody older than 5 would realize…
Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel is a very short book, a bit over 100 in the printed version, I read it as an ebook though. I was annoyed by the book as it could have been so much better if it wasn’t for the…
I got The Four Horsemen as an audiobook. I wanted to listen to an audiobook when I was doing something boring at work (I rarely have to, hence rarely listening to audiobooks) and I was happy to discover that this one was available at the…
I read The Little Book of LYKKE by Meik Wiking a few years ago. As I had it in my bookcase and I was looking for a relaxing read before bedtime, I picked this book up to read it again. First time I gave the…
Difficult Women by Helen Lewis – A History of Feminism in 11 Fights. The chapters are: Divorce, the Vote, Sex, Play, Work, Safety, Love, Education, Time, Abortion, and The Right to be difficult. This is not a history book, despite its subtitle. It is a…
The book The Little Book of Humanism by Alice Roberts, Andrew Copson* – Universal Lessons on Finding Purpose, Meaning, and Joy – sounds exactly like the sort of book I would read, if you have a look at the Philosophy section of this blog. I…
Aesop’s Fables translated by Laura Gibbs contains 600 fables, aetiologies, paradoxes, insults, and jokes. First published in English by Caxton in 1484, Aesop is known even today and his fables are even more well known. This translation is the first to represent all the main…
We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer – Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast. The whole concept of the book is that, despite being made aware by countless scientists, most of us live as if we were climate change deniers because we fail to…
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari is the third book I read by Harari. As with the other two, I rate this highly as well. If you are familiar with his views, you might expect that he would touch on the…
The English by Jeremy Paxman – A Portrait of a People. The aim of the book was to talk about the English, not the British or Scots, Irish, or Welsh. I got this book from a second hand bookshop, one of two by him, and…