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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future — Ashlee Vance

Vance’s Elon Musk biography is informationally good but aesthetically average, or even slightly below average (aesthetics are graded non-linearly). You should read it, though, if for no other reason...

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Briefly noted: The Festival of Insignificance — Milan Kundera

The Festival of Insignificance is out and I don’t know what to make of it. It’s nice enough I suppose but it feels . . . Insubstantial? Disconnected? Do I not get it? Hard to say. Characters or figures...

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The single-speed State Bicycle review, and a philosophical meditation

I told a friend that I’d sold my old bike and bought a State bike and he replied, “Single-geared bikes look pretty, but gears are amazing. I’ve never ridden a fixie. What’s the deal?” In status terms...

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Briefly noted: The Pattern Scars – Caitlin Sweet

It took half the novel for me realize the problem with The Pattern Scars: It contains virtually no interesting sentences. None that say something unexpected or have unusual musicality or that are...

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Life: Books, readers and writers

“Some people think there are two kinds of books. The book the author writes, and the one the reader owns. For me the owner is of interest too.” —Jean-Claude Carrière, This Is Not the End of the Book,...

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Life: Interpretation and the work edition

“Hamlet is not a masterpiece; it’s a muddled tragedy, which fails to bring its disparate sources into a coherent whole. But that’s also why it has become an enigma that continues to fascinate and...

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Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring sanity to our politics, our economy, and our...

There is something futile about this otherwise consistently interesting book, and Heath says as much towards the end: It should go without saying that writing books about the decline of reason is not...

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Briefly noted: Why The Allies Won – Richard Overy

Why the Allies Won is just right in every way: just the right level of detail; just the right level of analysis; just the right tone; just the right amount of acknowledgment of other points of view;...

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Echopraxia — Peter Watts

Echopraxia is among the best books I’ve read, ever, and is as weird and good as its predecessor, Blindsight. If you haven’t read Blindsight start with it. Like Blindsight, I had only some idea about...

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My next novel, THE HOOK, is out today

My latest novel, The Hook, is out today as a paperback and Kindle book. It’s even available on the iTunes Bookstore for the masochists among you. The Hook is fun and cheap and you should definitely...

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Where does personality come from?

In “Sentences to ponder, The Strong Situation Hypothesis,” Tyler Cowen quotes from a study: This hypothesis, based on the work of Mischel (1977), proposes that personality differences are especially...

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Briefly noted: Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game — Jon...

Date-onomics is charming and worth reading for anyone who is single, who is at risk of becoming single, or curious about how markets are created and how people interact with markets in this domain....

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Briefly noted: “Mate” is out and it’s good — Tucker Max and Geoffrey Miller

As previously noted, Mate: Become the Man Women Want is out and it’s good.* As the book says in the introduction, “Your culture has failed you and the women you’re trying to meet.” The book is part of...

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Briefly noted: The Word Exchange — Alena Graedon

The best criticism of this novel is “Human, All Too Inhuman,” in which James Wood, among other things, defines hysterical realism. “Human, All Too Inhuman” was written before The Word Exchange but...

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The new Houellebecq is out:

  And some of its themes will be familiar to fans: On the first page, François is finishing school, and he “realized that part of my life, probably the best part, was behind me.” As it is for everyone...

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Briefly noted: Mozart in the Jungle — Blair Tindall

Mozart in the Jungle is surprisingly good and an ode to all the sex musicians have, the drugs musicians do (“I watched Janet bent over the desk to snort cocaine through a straw” occurs on page 2), and...

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Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology — Kentaro Toyama

My review on Grant Writing Confidential is actually germane to readers of The Story’s Story, too, so I’ll start by directing you there. The book’s central and brilliant point is simple: for at least a...

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Briefly noted: Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and...

Excellent Sheep is great though polemical—snide remarks about tech companies are neither true nor useful—and one gets a sense of its contents from “Solitude and Leadership: If you want others to...

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Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst — Adam Philips

Becoming Freud could be called “Reading Freud” or “Defending Freud,” because it has little to do with how Freud became Freud—there are decent, let alone good, answers to this question—and much to do...

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Life: Belief edition

“It is difficult to believe in a thing when one is alone and there is no one to speak to.” —Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe. Truth has collective properties, and that’s one reason 1984 and similar...

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