wise_tamarin's reviews
9 reviews

A decent start to the series. 

If I had to summarize it's plot in a few lines: it's a progression fantasy about a boy with a certain handicap, trying to overcome the challenges borne of it to forge his own path among The Sacred Arts, that will enable him to become powerful in combat. 

I'm not sure if I'm too interested in the magic system itself. But there's no heavy number crunching like in LitRPGs, and it's explained well enough without it bearing down upon the character and plot progression. So it is indeed a well-done progresion fantasy. 

An impressive interplay of symbolism, character and themes, a literary-wise great story! 

A decent, entertaining web novel. Highly addictive and among the best web novels that you can read online.

It's an interesting thesis on the broad social scientific factors behind the Rise of Mormonism. 

It's not really a history book, in the sense that it narrates the trajectory and events related to the growth and spread of Mormonism. Instead, it's more of a book elucidating some factors that could be behind the rise and spread of this potential world religion. 

I found it to be very interesting in that aspect. It is to be noted that Stark's predictions about Mormon growth may not hold in the next couple of decades, considering the recent decline in Mormon growth. But learning about some interesting factors behind how a religion becomes succesful definitely makes it worth the time. 

 So overall, the book seeks to explain the backdrop of the Lafferty murders which occurred on July 24 1984. It faithfully presents all the relevant events and doctrines which would provide the crucial context for the motives behind the murders. Like how one might seek to explain the actions of modern day Muslims in the backdrop of the Prophet’s actions in Mecca and Medina — this work explores the actions and beliefs of certain fanatic fundamentalists by exploring the birth and evolution of the Mormon religion.

The author believes that understanding the Lafferty murders fully requires one to understand the evolution of the Mormon Church’s doctrines over the years. He provides short narratives on the lives and sayings of the various Prophets — Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Uncle Rulon etc. to tell us the role of the controversial Polygamy revelation in the lives of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints. 

It tries a bit to explore the psychological foundations behind the murders as well, but I would say it didn’t delve much deeper into this aspect. That is, the book claims that it is trying to explore the nature of religious belief — but I do not think it has explored it well enough. 

It does not go much deep into the question of why these beliefs hold so much value to the believers in the first place, why sensible people choose to believe or what patterns there are in these beliefs. Thus it comes off as a juvenile atheistic perspective on the matter. In the end, Krakauer, like various other atheists, puts all the religions into the same box. He says that they all say that every other religion is wrong — belying his ignorance of the Eastern faiths. 

Coming out of reading this book, I am more informed on the matter of the Mormon faith, but don’t have any increased insight regarding the nature of religious belief. However, I would say that the dry, impassionate data points presented in this book are definitely trying to point to it and might help me make some valuable connections later. I do not regret reading this book at all, and would definitely recommend it for anyone trying to get an idea about Mormon history and it’s fundamentalist stripe. 

Might refer to it later when I do a second reading of Moby Dick.

So far this book hasn't been going much into an exposition of the themes and philosophical underpinnings of Moby Dick - to help grasp more from the text. It's more of giving you facts, snippets of history and context behind Melville's various choices throughout the book. That isn't as interesting to me at this moment, so I'll reserve this book for a later reading of Moby Dick.

This is a book best read after you've tackled and completed Moby Dick yourself. 

It contains several insights into the meanings that Melville tries to present in his magnum opus, and the artistic processes inscribed inside Melville's own personal life that bore fruit to this Epic. 

I'm not sure how to put it, but it is definitely an enchanting and reflective read. It is in those category of books that you should at-least try to read and digest at least once in your life. For half of the novel, partly due to the hard-to-read prose and partly due to the technical chapters describing whaling, I did not think this would go down into my foremost favorites.

The feelings I have got in certain portions of this novel would perhaps be comparable and second only to the feelings I got while reading the Bhagavad Gita. For example, in that chapter when Melville describes the whiteness of the whale, I couldn't help but harken back to Vishnu's cosmic form in chapter 11 of the Gita (the same chapter from which Oppenheimer's famous quote comes from).

It is also hilarious at certain portions, especially in the portions of Ishmael's (the narrator) random ramblings.

It would go down in among those select few works that I would like to reread and understand more. 

It maybe a tedious read, but I would suggest the reader to stick with it. Try to tame it much like the elusive White Whale beast. Read it slowly, deliberately. Reread portions to grasp it better. Utilize chapter summaries after reading the chapter, to avoid getting lost. And maybe use an annotated edition. 

An informative book. The thesis can be summarized as: Given the correct food environments, humans and animals intuitively know how to optimally balance both their macronutrient and micronutrient intake.

This will give you a general framework on building up correct nutrition principles and the right food environment.