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Walk Through Walls: A Memoir
★★★★★
read on 2026/05/02
She reads it herself.
There is something in her rhythm that speaks of the places i am from.
And something in her goals, hopefully, about the places i am going to.
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Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
★★★★★
read on 2026/02/13
I went to a wedding recently
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The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography
read on 2025/11/02
I like the trip. It's dreamy and flowy.
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Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
read on 2025/04/16
Lots of little practical tips on what to do with your habits.
I could have enjoyed reading the book a bit more, but it did provide a canvas to re-think my habits, so that was good.
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The School of Life: An Emotional Education
read on 2025/04/07
Some really good quotes
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Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction
★
I didn't finish this book, because I didn't enjoy it.
2 main things:
1. As other reviews put it very well, there are many iterations on the title of this book such as:
‘A Very Short Introduction to Witch Trials’, "The History Of The Persecution of Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction." or maybe most apt "quite boring introduction to witchcraft persecution statistics".
It reminded me a bit about my history classes, all these years, names, numbers and places, and a mess of words, with no story to settle on and understand.
I remember when my brother, who is into history, decided to do explore the story of the "soldier" in some war. It was captivating, and then one needs the context to understand what happens and why, so the numbers, years, names start making some sense.
Anyways, although a story of the people, AVSI witchcraft was also extracted to a bunch of guys who wrote some texts and then influenced laws.
Reminds, me of the movie air that was about a shoe deal.
2. After reading "Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women" which was eye-opening with all its social and gender readings into witch-hunting, this doesn't even come close, or maybe even perpetuates some of these biases. (Other reviews put it well).
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Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction
read on 2024/06/20
The weirdest nature book I have ever read. But it was captivating, and with its points so I kept going.
[might add more later]
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Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence and How You Can Too – A State-of-the-Art Guide to Personal Branding and Social Media
read on 2024/06/13
huslbro
The stories of all the people CRUSHING IT were cool tho!
off to crush it myself, bye 😂
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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
read on 2024/08/10
I was wondering if this is a book on climate for technologists to read. Maybe it's a good way to start someone who's into tech and has a "tech will solve everything" mentality, into the climate issue and potentially inspire action and nudge them towards "I will make tech for climate".
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I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times
read on 2024/07/18
A bunch of interesting points and ideas on how to talk across divides (in the book it's mainly through the political example).
The takeaway for me is that people on the other side "also" can't understand "my" position on things, and think that if what "I" believe in comes to the general public it will ruin society and we are doomed, the same way "I" think this way of some other policies, outlooks etc.
Not sure what to do with this, but it makes sense that in the "logical" constructs of people's worlds, there is no way to combine other "logical" constructs of different worlds that are not based on the same rules.
I went to ArsTechnica in Linz and it was fun, there was an interactive Exhibit, and there were words one could pick out of a list, to be displayed "on the parliament"-or some other important building, i don't remember- well there were about 8 or so different words. I picked "Respect" so swiftly, as a clear winner of important words, and the person that was with me also picked that. So we did a shadow act of the word respect. Anyways, I asked the artists what the most common words people were picking, and they mentioned: "Help", "Participation" all the other ones.
And I commented with my buddy that it's interesting that Respect was not featured as much, and we concluded that maybe it has something to do with our line of work, or what brought us there. We were both in Tech for Nature, and maybe it's the respect one feels for everyone and everything that makes you want to be active in there. And if help is your core word, maybe step by step it leads you to different jobs and different life outlooks.
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The Art of Starting: How to Build Your Creative Business from the Ground Up
read on 2024/08/11
The two writers start a flower shop and one that is very embedded in the local community, so it's a bit different to the things I am trying to practice the art of starting with. With it was a pleasant listen during a midnight cupboard building and cleaning session. It's nice to read stories of people who try, and manage, and learn (and then share the learning).
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Girls That Invest: Your Guide to Financial Independence through Shares and Stocks
★★★★★
read on 2024/09/07
Loved the bits about the relationship to money and stereotypes.
Will try to get some (girl)friends to read it. Also so enriching and rewarding to read perspectives from non northamericans, the little insights, the view of the world.
Money has been on my mind, so was good to have a bit of a financial reflection.
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The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
read on 2024/09/07
Fun in the way it explained a thesis and then set out an experiment for it. In some way extrapolating the essence of an act/emotion.
(Still sometimes it’s easy to wonder if there is something else at play).
Pleasant listen intertwined with personal stories, wouldn’t exactly make the book my friend but i wouldn’t mind hanging out next to them at a party, and listening to their stories, while still thinking it was a great night.
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Chronicle of a Death Foretold
★★★★★
read on 2023/09/13
I enjoyed this book a lot. Like a flower with many petals of different sizes or the trips of a bee.
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Three Women
★★
read on 2024/02/07
I needed a distraction and a friend had recommended some chick flicks a few days prior so i thought why not, but the ones she mentioned were not available in the library so i looked for other things that could fit the bill.
I was hooked on the prologue (which seems to be one of my fav genre, (strong) women writing essays about their “normal” lives). It was a really good reflection and story and processing of facts and love and all and i hoped the book would be like that too.
(It was not), but it was a page turner and it gave me the needed distraction and took my brain away until i was done. (When books are longish i start to feel some resentment about this, if i am also not completely sold on the content). But i got a strange version of a chick flick maybe darker and with lots of sex (sometimes a bit porny, but didn’t feel out of place, porny in the sense that everyone was moaning and coming and all that - except when they weren’t, a truth i was grateful form, when one of the women is describing this incredible encounter and she then mentions that he must have stayed for almost half an hour, which brought down to earth the incredible loneliness and low expectations). Anyways i guess i still need “to do” read a chick flick, because there wasn’t enough happy ending nor enough humor, but that was not a book for that.
I think this describes the disappointment of what this book is and what it sells in its first pages to be.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Also there was no condoms anywhere, or any mention of any birth control. One pregnancy scare…
The writer also says at the beginning how she set out to explore male desire, and then figured that female desire is way more interesting or something so she’ll write about that, but then ended up writing about how the desire from a bunch of men shaped these women.
Maybe sticking with the male desire premise (and their effect on women), as in the prologue, might have been more fruitful.
——
The prologue tho👌
Also I cried so much at the suicide bit, i think it was shared and crafted with a lot of gentleness and care, and that lingering of the hug that if would be forever is haunting, and so very relatable in many of it’s forms.
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How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times
★★★★
read on 2024/09/01
Actually really enjoyed this. (Still in the “whisper good habits into my ear” phase). Written by a “productivity guru” it takes this approach to calm - like burnout will make you less productive.
Given that i’ve recently scraped off the most obvious layer of shit distraction (deleted instagram off my phone, installed a feed hiding chrome extension) I was ripe for the new level of changes. The writer talks about a stressors inventory - which i am now way more able to see because of the lack of the most obvious stressors-distractions. And the idea of a stimulus fast, which i am kind of eyeing again - i used to do no tech days or evenings.
Also being more intentional with what i want and how i achieve it, and maybe confining some stressors into blocks of time. The biggest difference with not having instagram et all is that now most of my inputs are my own or at least of my surroundings/community so it’s easier to build on top of and connect to things already in my mind. I still notice moments of distraction even though healthier so next step is actually thinking about how to internalize those even more, and shift from a consumption to creation mindset.
Also went to an underwater rugby tournament and scored an incredible goal 😎😎🌊💪💃🧜♀️
The interesting thing is that i couldnt sleep in the morning but i decided to just lie there, not go on my phone or do some other thing, lie and think. And well, it went ok.
Listening to these books is like having friends talk about stuff that is something relevant. It’s just a way to further conversation.
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The End of Your Life Book Club
★★★★
read on 2024/08/04
I also had a parent die slowly, in a way where you can talk to them about it, talk to yourself about it, imagine a life without them before it happens, see their body come and go, each time with a little less buffer than the previous.
I really enjoyed this book, not sure if it would mean that much to someone who hasn't gone through similar, the gentleness in those moments waiting in the various hospitals or long rides, or the constant reminder of how many things work in a body, noticed when it doesn't work anymore.
We all die, but it's funny when we die more obviously, what this gives to us.
A chance to thank then once more, something we don't necessarily do when we live day to day.
I am grateful to those who let me know that they might be "on the way out". I think there is immense gratefulness to some poeple's influence in our lives, and I feel, why not share it with them.
I remember, how hard it is to share, for the sick person, too or maybe especially. But what is life but to be loved, and why not let love come in, in times like this.
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Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women
★★★★★
read on 2024/08/03
We have a few witch stories where I come from, and I wanted to explore the topic.
But it's hard(er) to find local stories and an insight into my history.
Really interesting points about how the witch hunts go hand in hand with capitalism, and the shift from communal living, to money making, and women (especially older ones) were standing in the way being like "it takes a village" and they were like nah "it takes land ownership and productivity".
And a bunch of other things that women supposedly do to men especially, and which makes them scary. Also interesting how they are usually portrayed as old women.
The interesting thing is also how much of it is still going on in the world.
At 3h length is a good and interesting review of the topic.
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Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success
read on 2024/09/04
Productivity-selfhelp binge continues.
As mentioned it's good to have these hype-y voices in my head say that things are possible and share little tricks on how to do it. And this book does that, easy llisten with stories supporting their 6 spot thesis (which i still didn't manage to write down) but split into the personal, social, structural aspects.
The idea is that it's less on willpower, and more about building the world around you, with people, space, skills that will enable you to shift into the changes one is looking for.
One nice image is that this couple got a porch bench, and that shifted the way their evenings played out and then also their relationship.
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Get Your Shit Together
read on 2024/08/25
I am back in my listen to productivity/selfhelp books phase, when I enjoy people just talking to me about doing things and throwing around some various tips to achieve that.
And because all the prominent productivity books have a waiting list, I just took a bunch of random titles that were available, this being one of them. This book is not great, but the writer (who reads the book herself) is enthusiastic, so I listened through it.
Off to some other people talking to me about how I can do things, and split things into manageable chunks, and one step by step, and just starting.
yay
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In Defence of Witches: Why Women Are Still on Trial
read on 2024/08/18
The book title misrepresents what's inside. I don't feel good about books that pose as empowering, then only talking about mistreatment.
It was a long list of ways in which women have it shitty, and not that much about witches.
I had recently listened to "Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women" from Silvia Federici, and wanted more of that.
Still I listened through it all, as there were some interesting bits, but I don't thrive off of that, I am no better a woman, having read all this, I think.
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Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
read on 2024/07/14
My sleep schedule is pretty creative, and I am also know for being pretty functional after nights of low sleep.
But all my cells went into revolt while reading this book and if they weren't getting the talked about sleep. They made me feel all the symptoms, especially the unflushed brain feeling.
Maybe the heatiest of the heat days also didn't help.
Anyways I can only improve.
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Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
read on 2024/01/13
I am on a boat, crossing the atlantic, so time is time, time is days and wind, so it was a good time to read a book about time.
Some bits were really relevant, those about finitude and what it beings, of choosing what to do, and knowing that space is limited. It’s funny how this is a post-productivity book. I mean it still is but i guess at least it looks at the bigger picture, in the sense of why even try to be “productive” and why even “live”. And i think it’s stuff, as the writer mentions, one is faced with when brushed with cancer or with death. That there is no point in rushing towards the future because we only have now.
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Silent Spring
read on 2024/05/22
wow this book is grimey
what is even more grimey is that it was written in 1962 and most of the numbers on species decline (that are oh so sad) start from the 1970, and the writer already talks about how bad things have gotten.
One strange side effect of reading all these books and realizing that our shit goes further back than I previously realized, well it kind of lightens the mood. The way a lightning makes you see for a bit.
I sometimes wonder if people after they've for example come to new zealand and seen the decline they alone brought in a span of decades, did they have the same mental processes that we are going through such us oh no, what are we doing, and then a few years later another deeper cycle of oh no what are we doing (I call it the climate journey).
What is action and change against the tides and streams that exist?
Even though I have the next climate book ready, reading this feels like it kind of concludes this "climate education" section.
Increadible book otherwise, for the time, and for the movement it created.
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Project Hail Mary
★★★★★
read on 2024/05/21
This book is just so adorable.
The bromance in the sky, wowsies.
It's basically a love story on how to communicate and deal with someone we care for.
yes yes yes
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Abel
read on 2024/04/04
First want to say thanks to the writer, it's been a 20 year relationship now, and I am so grateful. I hope you live long and keep producing.
Having said the above, this one didn't get me, it's one of the few. And although there were a couple of sentences, images or topics that were a little sticky all in all it was a fire that didn't burn.
I've also been thinking I should reread some older stuff, just because it's been so long since.
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101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think
read on 2024/02/09
I put this book on hold in my library because i thought it was written by brene brown (now i know that’s her name) and there was a looong queue so i got swept by the masses.
So this book was inspirational, but not for the reasons think intended by the author 🤣
I’ve been trying to write this thesis for a course i started a million years ago and i really felt i was dragging out all these words and writing all this random stuff, and really didnt feel that great about anything.
But after listening to this book for a bit (and realizing, wait a minute this can’t be the be vulnerable is strong Brene book i thought it was), i figured if someone can write a bunch of random words and have a queue on the library app i can also write my thesis for no body’s eyes really, and it doesnt matter what and how it actually sounds.
(Since then i managed to write some words that i even feel pretty good about. On the topic of biodiversity and business if anyone is curious.)
Quite some of this book’s content was not for me (what would you do this Saturday if social media was not a thing, well the very same thing i am doing now), although the format (an avalanche of questions and points) very much was. So i enjoyed putting it on to have my brain buzz with half answers as i tried to switch off from other topics. It helped me fall asleep a few times during day time naps (but then i’d go back because i gotten invested).
Also coming from all the somewhat scientific climate change literature where every statement has sources and every number has to be scientifically approved, having this person just list random thats-how-it-isms, was a bit of a shock.
Also i really don’t like it when it’s not the writers themselves reading the books. The professional readers always try to make it an art, using voices or whispering here and having a grave words elsewhere. I really appreciate when the writers read the books themselves. You can really feel how they meant things, the little breaks, the smile that comes through when they talk about something that is really meaningful. Also sometimes it feels much more like friends.
By the end i was enjoying the book quite a bit, still getting pissed at some outrageous statements but mostly just dozing along a someone tickling my brain a tiny little bit.
Wouldn’t it be good if we all put more time into processing
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I Love Dick
read on 2024/02/08
Ugh. That’s how i feel, not how i feel about the book.
This concludes this impromptu trilogy, triad, triptych on female desire (over three days), and triptych is a word our teacher laid on us after a school trip, and we had to write a triptych “essay” of that trip (as in i assume, 3 things we’ve seen). But i remember having to look up the world first and it was hard to write an essay with that world in the title without having it internalized.
And wouldn’t it be good if all teachers made space into the unknown.
And there’s (teachers) who destroy you, and why did that guy who destroyed chris instill that you cant be art without exploring your sexuality whatever. Why cant art be about what people want it to be. And so people dont explore.
It made me want to be an art teacher for a second.
Actually, thinking about it, when i give people my career workshop i always make them draw - an auto-portrait none the less (A stick figure of themselves, and a visual representation of their goals, in like 5 seconds or so)
So it made me slightly pissed off at the role of women, and how i was blind at the misrepresentation (like how normal it is just to see men men men, like i didnt watch the fifa women cup much, but every time i did i cried, i was like wow wow wow, my kid-girl-eyes imagining looking up to these women, no wonder i rarely had role models, when the repertoire of “normal” grown women with lives and experiences that are shown off is so low) and how some organizations are trying to add more female speakers on their panels or women on places or whatever but how plain is the world.
When a book is slightly longer than one sitting i still kinda do it in one, and then i am tired and the words kinda drag deliriously but i think that’s how it was too. Some great quotes and i totally get it.
Fuel yourself alive with an image of someone.
One time i wrote this feverish letter to a guy sitting across the corner of an airport hall overnight. I was determined to actually give it to him (i think i was in the “people should know they can stir a stranger into their core” phase, which i am still in btw), but maybe i fell asleep or maybe i was just immersed in my words, and he was gone.
I think i still was “polite” in the letter and so i did assume the letter to be a gift (also because it assumed my disappearance right afterwards).
As poets from back then teach us, you need to see the girl in church or walking down the road once, and then become obsessed, become the fuel of your art. She’s the muse, she’s not to be included in the game. To be fair i am impressed chris’s writing kept going (actually she did stop for a long while before it became a different journey).
I started watching the series years ago with a friend and we never finished and now it’s open and i dont know what’s going on, but anyways Dick wouldnt would wouldnt would wouldnt answer the phone calls.
I feel weird about books that have the “analysis” right after or even before you start reading the book itself, like whats that, but i was hooked and kept reading, and the analysis gave it this whole homoerotic read aka the men just wanted to make sure to keep their relationship or whatever, which makes me even more pissy, and isnt that exactly the point of the whole book that the critics cancel out the story of the women.
——
When you play a game, and sometimes it makes you alive, but then they dont want to play the game but they also dont tell you that they dont want to play the game but then sex why not but what about sincerity, words are lost. It was sweet to feel this girl so alive for a moment and how life goes by fast.
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The Sexual Life of Catherine M.
read on 2024/02/07
A friend asked me if i know any books that portrays healthy relationship and healthy sex, and i was a bit taken aback because there aren’t any that come to mind easily, that i could point out to and be like read this.
There is something here and there that contains in itself a magical moment (that helped me fuel -love-, pursue or live within my stories too).
Anyways i was like ok let me to a bit of a google research, and soon i wanted female writers, but the lists werent easy, they werent giving the answers i wanted - maybe it’ll be clearer why when i share that this book was on all the lists, and of course it’s a woman writing about sex.
And i am grateful for her sincerity and ease and normality in the description of events, but i definitely wouldnt suggest it as a healthy relationship, love and sex example. But interesting none the less, she does touch upon a wide range of topics.
But first, prologue:
I had read three women yesterday and the more time passed (which was probably minutes out here at sea, time passes different in the heat) from me putting down the book and me thinking i was getting pissed and annoyed at the way that book was presented (in the prologue by the writer herself, i had never heard of the book before) to be about female desire and the complexity of responding to other people’s desire and how she could twist and turn that story of her mother being followed by the masturbator every day to work and look at that through so many lenses, and stories of other men and her dad and the roughness of a realization of ones mum also being a woman. Anyways it was exquisite, and the book itself was just porn. And anyways you can read my other review. Point was that if i was already reading about sex, why not do it full on, as i remembered this book from those lists i found a few months ago.
At least this book mention STDs and a condom once (and was it one abortion? Or was it pregnancy scare? I dont remember anymore it’s all a blur).
Anyways it’s good to read of women talking of themselves and their sex, in first person or maybe i am influenced by my next read “i love dick” where chris is like i can finally write in 1st person. So maybe i should take it as a hint and challenge and write letters to myself in first person about my sex. I already started with a little and very unfinished essay called things people offered me for sex. The fries were so picturesque that i felt i need to give it a stage.
I wish i could have read it in french, i could feel the nuance of translation slipping in and losing on life. Although i was grateful for some click->define action at the colorful english, but not in sexual terms. Someone mentioned in another review being bothered by cunt, for me it was arse. I am sure the french had it better. And why always arse, i am sure there are many words.
In any case, another thing i found interesting is that all her experiences were generally linear, introduced, like one man would lead her to another, or to a park or to the orgy or to whatever. No brushes against strangers. I wonder how is it that all these women dont talk about condoms and stds and pregnancies and observing the difference in discharge or whatever. Is it really something so remote? Or motherhood even.
Did someone say death?
Anyways i liked this read. I liked the sincerity and i liked the also gentle probing into the maybe issues she had and how long it took her to actually start thinking about her desire and her pleasure and even the nods to all the negative emotions, like jealousy or where not to fuck in your and your partners home if you bring someone back.
And why all these women talk about not being pretty, what the fuck. Like being like sorry i am not pretty but here’s my arse. Or i am not pretty thats why i read a lot. Fuck that.
A thought crystallized a few days ago before i even went on this women-sex binge and that is:
“You’ve got so much more to offer than your looks” as an answer to some worries a friend of mine shared through her life.
These incredible, caring, hardworking, funny, gorgeous women, looking at their oh-so-beautiful bodies and only seeing mistakes.
A long time ago i wanted to take cute+goodlooking+sexy+alive pictures of my friends just to show them how beautiful they are, maybe it would help for them to see how when there is a kind and loving or even just severely infatuated eye (and thats not just me) how it sees them, incredible. Sometimes it takes someone else to show how beautiful you are to see. Hold onto it. That image of being alive and transcending that image into an identity.
❤️
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Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse
★★★★★
read on 2024/02/04
Beautiful book. Love letter to insects, while at the same time talking about what we’ve done to them (like 80-95% declines since 1970, 1970 thats way after the introduction of pesticides and destruction of habitats but oh well).
I ve been binging on various climate change books over the last months and this was one i actually had to pause and take a breather because the numbers were just too rough. (I guess the fact that we mostly don’t give a shit about insects or find them a nuisance adds to it, and the fact that we know so little about them too).
Who needs pokemon or monsters when we have this world to explore. 😭
I love it when writers themselves read their books and this book too had emotion and personality interwoven with stats and i like when these topics are presented like this.
Lots of data is haunting but one thing that stayed with me is the fact that so many words got taken out from the junior dictionary and that is telling.
Also i thought of you st helena giant earwig as i visited the island. Your home was beautiful sorry we took it away from you.
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Finding Purpose: Environmental Stewardship as a Personal Calling by Andrew J. Hoffman (2016-04-28)
read on 2024/02/07
Funny mix of self-help productivity book and climate change. Having started my most recent binge with these two genres, it was funny to see it combined.
Nothing earth shattering but was a good way you pass the time as it has some interesting numbers and thought, plus it’s good to hear someone toot the business horn.
But i am sad every time it’s not the writers themselves reading the books.
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39 Ways to Save the Planet: Real World Solutions to Climate Change - and the People Who Are Making Them Happen
read on 2024/01/22
Podcast style “book” but good listen nonetheless. It’s good to hear all the different projects and ideas and well hope and conviction people have in the fact that they need to work in the field. The variety of accents was enriching.
I wish for a “where are they now” series in general with any of these climate books but with the businesses i would so love to have a tracker.
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Candide
★★★★★
read on 2024/01/13
What a vibe.
Last time i read it, it was after a few months of travel in south east asia, i was tired, and so for the last three days i just laid around the airport reading books. And funny how they say in the foreword (that i skipped because some dude thought that 150years later candido would have been different) nah candido is all the same. It could very well have been written today as a piss-take (or who ever needs to write again, but a few solid and colorful prompts for chatgpt to output a delicacy in similar style and content).
Well what they say in the foreword is that it made generations laugh, and yes even the same person at different times of life.
I’ve been wanting to re read it for a while and finally on a voyage of my own i voyage with Candido.
Definitely not all is for the well, but having at least a bit of this mentality definitely helps.
It’s like the non pretentious alchemist😅
And oh deat how much i love the chapter titles.
Also the grumpy venetian made me do a double take, as i often define “my people” as in people feom the lands around us, to like to complain and not appreciate what we have.
And what a name to the main character Candido ❤️🌟🌊
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