Post: #826

The culture of critique: an evolutionary analysis of Jewish involvement in 20th century intellectual and political movements. (The author is Kevin MacDonald).
So far it's really eye-opening. I'll put up a chapter by chapter review sometime.

Post: #827

Ride The Tiger by Julius Evola. Only 30 pages in.

Post: #828

The Predatory Female by Lawrence Shannon

Mentioned by Roosh or some other ROK writer in one of the articles. Just started a few days ago and currently 20 pages in

Post: #829

(02-08-2017 02:23 PM)brick tamland Wrote:  The culture of critique: an evolutionary analysis of Jewish involvement in 20th century intellectual and political movements. (The author is Kevin MacDonald).
So far it's really eye-opening. I'll put up a chapter by chapter review sometime.

The criticism of this that I have heard is that he cherry picks his data. Would be interested in hearing your take.

Post: #830

Thai Reference Grammar by James Higbie and Snea Thinsan.
Very comprehensive content and the way it's written is easy on the eye and I usually feel super motivated when I am at it. A very good choice for those who want to learn the language.

Post: #831

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

About half way through. I'm not a huge novel reader but this is great, very deep and I think will take a few readings to get it.

"First published in 1866, it is the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished St. Petersburg ex-student who plots to kill an elderly money-lender, Alëna, and profit from her wealth. The murder however does not go as planned and Raskolnikov must suffer the disastrous moral and psychic consequences of his actions."

Post: #832

(01-17-2017 04:12 PM)Hypno Wrote:  

(01-14-2017 12:43 PM)rkIE Wrote:  Reinvent Yourself by James Altucher. He's one of my favorite writers to read, so seeing this book published unannounced recently was like Christmas for me. It's very well-written and full of original ideas. Also goes into a lot of stories/lessons from his podcast, which I find really beneficial.

if you have not already read it, you should get "Choose Yourself" by Altucher. Very good book about current technology allowing one to bypass filters. For example, authors can self-publish, musicians can make more money from youtube than a record label. Also about eliminating self-limiting thinking.

I have read all of his stuff and have been following him for years. I quit following him on Facebook(his personal account), when out of nowhere he had this giddy new girlfriend posting pics of them multiple times a day. It was really annoying and looked really bad on his part. It was like he was married to Claudia one day, then this weird Russian looking chick is all over his news feed, and it looked like Claudia was out. I sort of lost interest in him after that, when he couldn't keep his personal female drama out of the public eye. I have looked around for info on this, but dont see it anywhere. I dont even know if he wrote about it. Anyone know what this girl drama with James was all about?

Post: #833

Devil In a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley.

Post: #834

Just finished Jack Kerouac's, On the Road. Highly overrated in my opinion. I read the original scroll, not sure if the edited version is much different in structure, but the former is 300 pages of rambling with a few glimses of greatness. I did admire Kerouac's passion for life though which is on full display throughout the book. He was able to recognize and appreciate the smallest things and experiences which is becoming a rarity I feel these days.

Post: #835

Coming up:

"The failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism" by Paul Craig Roberts
"Why Cold War Again?" How America lost Post-Soviet Russia by Stephen Cohen

Post: #836

(02-12-2017 04:54 PM)Sooth Wrote:  Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

About half way through. I'm not a huge novel reader but this is great, very deep and I think will take a few readings to get it.

"First published in 1866, it is the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished St. Petersburg ex-student who plots to kill an elderly money-lender, Alëna, and profit from her wealth. The murder however does not go as planned and Raskolnikov must suffer the disastrous moral and psychic consequences of his actions."

A great one, and concise compared to Brothers Karamazov, which is another masterpiece. What an author.

Post: #837

I'm reading a lot of school but for my own enjoyment I am just starting Guderian's Achtung Panzer. I skipped forward a bit and read some but I will be starting it from the beginning. I've already read quite a lot on the topic of armored warfare including a book that was written by Guderian after World War 2.

Post: #838

(02-12-2017 04:54 PM)Sooth Wrote:  Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

About half way through. I'm not a huge novel reader but this is great, very deep and I think will take a few readings to get it.

"First published in 1866, it is the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished St. Petersburg ex-student who plots to kill an elderly money-lender, Alëna, and profit from her wealth. The murder however does not go as planned and Raskolnikov must suffer the disastrous moral and psychic consequences of his actions."

Just finished the book a few weeks ago. I'm officially on the Doestoyevsky train - I will doubt him no more.

Post: #839

(02-17-2017 10:45 PM)MajorStyles Wrote:  Just finished the book a few weeks ago. I'm officially on the Doestoyevsky train - I will doubt him no more.

this direct and open appreciation of the big D. is so fascinating to me. i was born in soviet union, grew up in independent ukraine and had to read quite a bit of classic russian literature (i.e. i read 3 out of 4 volumes of "war and peace" and SWALLOWED "master i margaritata" in prolly less than a day or two) but i found the big D. (and much of other russian lit of that time) to be WAY too depressing for my palate.

have i missed some deeper layer to his writings? i never read them directly beyond possibly a short piece or too, but got to know it through my dad's stories/explanation of radion's motivations, actions, and his punishment.

Post: #840

Picked up from a free table a copy of "The black Corsair" from renowned (controversial?) Emilio Salgari.
If I was 10 I would have found it amazing indeed, now at the gate of thirty and still liking pirate stories I find it a bit...well,childish.
Still,I do find amusement at the rather infantile security with which the author affirms as fact rather inaccurate or compeletly wrong descriptions of certain people and objects (verifiable at the time by a well traveled enquirer) and well, it's a pop corn flick story. Why not?

Post: #841

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Good self improvement book. I already knew some of the stuff the writer was talking about but I learned alot about myself, how my brain - emotions worked, what I was feeling, why I was feeling the way I feel etc. I also believe it would help a lot of people about understanding their emotional well being and professional - personal lives since people in general, even the educated, developed ones seem to know very little about this such important subject.

Post: #842

The War For America 1775-1783

It's the Revolution from the British perspective.

Post: #843

Ok, so I read a book that I liked, it is a critique of personality testing called ""Cult of Personality" by Annie Murphy Paul. It is kind of a warning about reducing the self to a label, and it charts the creation and the use of things like the Myers Briggs, Rorschach, Thematic Apperception, MMPI tests to define and sort personalities.

There is a lot of useful information in this book, like the fact that the Rorschach and the MMPI tests were originally created for diagnosing the mentally ill, something that would be good to know if your boss wants you to take one of them.

The main point of the book is that each creator had his own aims and idiosyncrasies in creating his version of testing for personality, and you should not take at face value that you are taking an objective test that will tell you who you are.

I know the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is popular on this forum and in the world, and I was introduced to it when I was in my early twenties and was very leery of it because I had been reading a lot of Jung, and one of his main ideas is that much of our true nature is hidden from us in a shadow self, and that we actually have to seek out and learn about our shadow to become truly whole. So, the idea that you could take a self reported test that would have validity and reliability seemed off to me, and my first thought was that this test would have Jung rolling in his grave.

Most of the notes I have from this book are on the MBTI, because that is the one I was interested in, and though I haven't tracked down all the author's research, there is enough about that test to give anyone pause before they trust it.

It started with a mom who was struck by the fact that her future son in law was nothing like her, and she began formulating her ideas in order to *figure him out.*

Later she came across Jung, and started to tailor his ideas to her own. She also rebranded the test as a way to help women find jobs that *fit them* during World War II.

Now, I believe that a person should be judged by the quality of their ideas and not their credentials, however, one should be a bit skeptical of a broad who, as the author says,

Quote:She was a forty four year old housewife with two teenage children. She had no training in psychology, no knowledge of test construction, no lab, no funding, not even a university affiliation.

She cottoned on to Jung's definition of three different ways of categorizing personality:

Introvert vs. Extrovert.
Thinking vs. Feeling
Sensing vs. Intuiting

She then made up her own oppositional pair:

Judging vs. Perceiving.

She teamed up with her daughter, and together they formulated the test.


This test has been extremely popular, and many many people say the reason is the "a ha" moment you get when your personality type is revealed to you at the end of the test. The author says that people seem to have mystical experiences with this people sorting test.

Now, obviously, since it falls in line with my intuition, I am very happy to share these notes.

I am especially dubious about it because of two quotes from Jung that the author includes:

The first was his own estimation of his very own personality typing method:

Quote:It is often very difficult to find out whether a person belongs to one type or another, especially in regards to oneself.

So, not a vote of confidence for self reporting as a basis for a multiple choice test.

Next quote was about personality typing apart from analysis in generaL;

Quote:To stick labels on people at first sight . . .[is] nothing but a childish parlour game.

Now, there is whole thread on the forum about the MBTI on the forum:

/thread-10657-page-5.html

On it I see some pretty smart guys who are getting something out of this instrument, so I am sure there are arguments in favor of it that are pretty strong.

I think this book is good though even if you see it as a devil's advocate to strengthen your arguments, and I pretty much agree with the author's conclusion in the epilogue that personality assessment tests, while useful, should not be accepted uncritically:

Quote:And for those of us who have sought the help of personality tests in understanding ourselves: remember that promoters of the tests — from the Rorschach to today's inventories of the Big Five — have claimed for nearly a century that they possess an X-ray of personality. But in truth (as psychologist Joseph Masling once put it) the X-ray is more like a mirror, reflecting mostly the testers' own needs and wants. The tests say more about them than they do about us.

Post: #844

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy:

Tolstoy is a red pill author. He unabashedly touched on the truths of the nature of women, marriage, the fact that most people are just doing what's best for themselves and are selfish and the implications of a wasted life, which is the theme of this short book. He gets very deep into the psychology, thought processes and motivations of his characters. I have a feeling I'll be thinking about this book days and longer after I finish.

The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump:

Also Red pill one could say. It's very straight-forward and to the point as one would expect from Trump. Listening to this audio book, as I am, makes you want to go out, grow, succeed and win.

Post: #845

I just finished reading "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual" by Michael Pollan, (enhanced edition)

Liked it.

There is so much nutritional science that constantly changes it is hard to keep up with, and Pollan, in this book, sets out to simplify it. He notes that human beings can be healthy on many diets except for one, the western diet of processed foods and grains, added fat, and added sugar with which we, unlike people eating traditional diets, suffer from obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

He got a lot of good reviews, and they are characteristically like this one:

Quote:In the more than four decades that I have been reading and writing about the findings of nutritional science, I have come across nothing more intelligent, sensible and simple to follow than the 64 principles outlined in a slender, easy-to-digest new book called Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, by Michael Pollan.

--Jane Brody, The New York Times

A short, simple, illustrated book, it all boils down to one rule:

Quote:Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

The edition I read had a bunch more rules that expand on the main one, and I wrote down the ones I liked:

Quote:

1. Don't eat what your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
2. Avoid foods trying to be something else.
3. Stay out of the middle aisles of the supermarket
4. Only eat things that can go bad.
5. Came in a plant? Eat. Made in a plant? Don't.
6. Eath mostly plants, especially leaves.
7. Eat colorfully.
8. Try different stuff.
9. Eat small oily fish.
10. Eat what has been eaten. ie: fermented. Yogurt, sauerkraut, etc.
11. Drink Water.
12. Stop eating before you are full.
13. Eat slow.
    

I read this book at a time I was getting bogged down in nutritionally swamps from all sides, and there is science and sense behind it, it can be read quickly, and it is easy to remember. You could probably get everything you need just from this post.

Post: #846

(((Howard Zinn's))) People's History of the USA. It's oversimplified social justice horseshit, and a fucking fourth grader could read it.

It's what teachers are indoctrinating the kids with today, though, so I figured I'd read it to say I did. It moves pretty fast.

Post: #847

Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth by Gitta Sereny

Post: #848

One chapter away from finishing Art of The Deal by Donald Trump. It basically delves deeper into how he makes his deals such as the casinos, the Wollman Rink, Trump Tower, etc. I definitely recommend it.

Post: #849

The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco.

About a third way through, I'm loving it, very enlightening material.

As a college student, and I've always had my mind on the slowlane to retirement after graduating - A lie I've been sold.

I have a different mindset now, inspired to steer to the fastlane

Post: #850

The Dictators by Richard Overy, a British historian. It's a compelling and thorough comparison of Nazi Germany under Hitler and the Soviet Union under Stalin. So far I'm impressed.