The Sorrows of Work in The School of Life Series is a short book that 
explains why so many of us are miserable at work.
The book attests that our misery is because of several factors: specialization, socialization, commercialization, scale, competition, collaboration, equal opportunity, and meritocracy.
Each of these reasons is fully explained in its own chapter. The explanations are very succinct.
The book’s conclusions are a little depressing, but true.
I stumbled on Artemis when searching for reading material for my Kindle. As is so often the case, I had purchased and borrowed a number of non-fiction books but found that my appetite did not match my ability to read “serious” books; particularly when busy and stressed.
I was able to grab Artemis for three bucks and decided to dive in. I had heard of the movie, The Martian, but not read the book. Oh, well.
Jazz Bashara is a criminal.
Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you’re not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you’ve got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.
Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she’s stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.
What I liked:
Not so much:
Bottom line:
All in all, it served its purpose in that it kept me entertained while not requiring much deep thought on my part. But I have to say it didn’t make me want to run out and buy The Martian.
The vast majority of my Civil War reading has been either objective or from the Union perspective. I decided to read a book from the Confederate perspective in General Lee’s Immortals: The Battles and Campaigns of the Branch-Lane Brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 by Michael C. Hardy.
It took a bit of an adjustment to view the war from the Confederate perspective, but the writing helped with the transition. With a few editing issues, the book is excellently written. Although written in a straight narrative of events, Hardy writes in a manner that is easy to read. He easily incorporates direct quotes from the participants into the text.
Hardy shines a much-needed light on the deeds of the Branch-Lane Brigade. The officers and men made their mistakes during the war, but in a number of battles their actions saved the Confederates from a crushing defeat. Unfortunately, the Brigade is best known for a crippling blow to the Confederacy – the wounding of General Jackson. Men from the Brigade accidentally fired the shots that wounded Jackson (although Hardy makes it clear that it was not the Brigade’s fault).
Another strength of the book is Hardy’s intermixing in the narrative various chapters on a soldier’s life. Hardy addresses issues that many unit history’s do not discuss – medical care, plight of prisoners, and crime and punishment. Most people know that medical care greatly improved as the Civil War progressed, but it was still poor compared to modern standards. More men died from disease and infections than from battle. As part of this discussion, Hardy looks at the Brigade’s dearth in qualified medical personnel. This deficiency caused undue hardships to the men of the brigade.
As with most good war books, Hardy includes plenty of maps and photographs of the men who served in the Brigade. The maps are especially helpful so that the reader can easily follow the action described in the text.
But we have customs that train us in how to behave, curbing our emotions and memories. Every conservative writes about them: Don’t tear down the great English oak unless you know why it was built, etc. etc.
Sometimes the customs go wrong, sometimes very wrong. Then people stir, wise men think, demagogues shout “Drain the swamp!” But often customs help us do and think the right thing.
Richard Brookhiser
So the 95 year old man was hoisted out of his wheelchair, flicked away the hand supporting his usable left arm, and raised its fingers in a salute to the casket of the 94 year old man.
At ease.
What a brilliant start to this Kevin Williamson post in The Corner at NRO:
Eric Levitz of New York magazine has written a long-ish post that is mostly about my political views, which he gets mostly wrong. This is not entirely his fault. Levitz operates under two heavy disabilities: The first is that he’s stupid, and the second is that he’s dishonest. Paul Krugman seems to have put in a lot of work in his transition from respected economist to trifling partisan rage-monkey, but Levitz seems to have been born dumber than a catfish. So it’s only his dishonesty I’ll fault him for.
Devastating. And beautiful somehow …
Being Busy can be likened to tumbling down an existential staircase: stimulus, reaction, stimulus, reaction. This frenetic cycle of reactivity holds our attention hostage, limiting our ability to recognize opportunities for love, growth, and purpose. These are the things that add value to our lives, yet they’re easily obscured by the rush of our busy lives.
The Bullet Journal Method, Ryder Carroll