Reading 2023

As I closed the book on 2023, I had finished 45 of the beasts. 11,410 total pages with a ~32pg/day avg. Not great but not too bad.

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BRUTAL MINDS by Stanley K. Ridgley

Dr. Ridgely wrote the best book that I have read, not just this year but in the last several. Your children are being subject to brainwash and it’s by design. His outline of the tactics is bone-chilling at best for I have struggled personally in my attempts to put the miasma of the woke to words. If you have too, don’t. Will you please read this and put a stop to the brain washing? Especially of your own children?

It is my opinion that Dr. Ridgely chose the title to connote the brutalist style of “architecture” to the same staggering ugliness of thought. I have not asked him, but you should. He’s active here on LinkedIn.

True Believer: ?Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer

??????????????? Published in 1951, Mr. Hoffer traces the common threads leading to the resurgences of mass movements and their different names but similar flavors. The sudden “interest” in mass movements is absolutely not correlated with anything that happened over the last 3+ years.

The late Mr. Hoffer, has a unique pedigree for sure and even though I try to resist judging a work by its author, it's pretty hard to avoid this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer

Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell

??????????????? Dr. Sowell has written a book for every 2 years of life. And he’s still writing! This is his latest. What do you suppose it’s about? Why do you suppose I ?l?i?k?e?d? loved it? Why do you think you owe it to yourself to read it?

The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set by Cynthia Chung

I was blown away by the insight of Ms. Chung's many encyclopedic posts and when I found out that she had written long-form, (really long-form – if you read her posts you know what I mean) I had to get it. Glad I did and so will you be. She writes up there with the late Carroll Quigley. Ok, less encyclopedic but same topics. Her substack pubs are also excellent and you owe it to yourself to sub: Through a Glass Darkly.

??????????????? The J Curve by Ian Bremmer

Dr. Bremmer is prolific in our modern world of Polly Tsai and keeps his post quota on social mediumzez. I have read 80 quadrillion of his posts and this was my first long-form. Wow, what kept me??? The J Curve is an astonishingly astute diagnosis of the problems of our world and it’s fun to read stuff that is going on 2 decades of age to see how accurate it was.

It was.

Creepy.

As usual, the full report-card:

and the ante-library for 2024 (so far)