Read A Book! #001

What I have been/am reading...

A quick note before we get started: You can read this post on my substack website(instead of in email) by clicking here. On my website you can also access all my other posts via the archive.

About Books…

From time to time I’ll briefly post about what I’m reading, or, in the main, more accurately listening to, as mostly I now consume audiobooks.

To get the ball rolling below is a list of some of the books I dove into during 2022 & 2023, followed by what I’ve been reading this January.

BTW until I compiled this list (lifted from my Audible and Kindle libraries) I didn’t realise how much I consume — at least two to three books a month!

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2022/23

• Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

• The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake

• Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness & Save the Planet edited by Paul Stamets

• Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

• The Madness of Crowds by

  Douglas Murray

• The Strange Death of Europe by

  Douglas Murray

• Heretic by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

• The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide by James Fadiman

• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

• Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

• 12 Rules For Life by Jordan B. Peterson

• Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson

• Maps of Meaning by Jordan B. Peterson

• Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

• The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard

• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change by Marc Morano

• Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

• Windswept & Interesting by Billy Connolly

• The Storyteller by David Grohl

• Ancestors by Alice Roberts

• The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain by Darío Fernández-Morera

• Isabelle of Castille by Giles Tremlett

• The Palestinian Delusion by Robert Spencer

• The War on the West by

  Douglas Murray

• Revelation by Russel Brand

• Woke Racism by

  John McWhorter

• The Art of War by Sun Tzu

• Brainwashed by Ben Shapiro

• The End of Gender by Dr. Debra W. Soh

• Irreversible Damage by

  Abigail Shrier

• The Parasitic Mind by Gad Saad

• Animal Farm by George Orwell

• 1984 by George Orwell

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

• The Iliad of Homer by Elizabeth Vandiver

• The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

• In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park

• What Time Remains by Yeonmi Park

• Spare by Prince Harry Duke of Sussex

• Unstoppable Us. Volume 1 by Yuval Noah Harari

• Intellectuals and Race by Thomas Sowell

• Tuning the Human Biofield by Eileen Day McKusick

• Electric Body, Electric Health by Eileen Day McKusick

• Western Philosophy in Simple Spanish by Olly Richards

• The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Visionary by Graham Hancock

• Psychedelic Medicine by Dr. Richard Louis Miller

• The Peyote Effect by Alexander S. Dawson

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During January 2024.

• The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower (Very well narrated by David De Vries, foreword by Neal Stephenson.)

  • This is, without doubt, one of my favourite books. I think I first read it much more than thirty years ago. It came to my mind recently during a discussion, with Paul Macko of

    Deplatformable Newsletter
    , about his fascinating post about Venus (and Russia). Freeman Dyson, Dresden, theoretical mathematics, and the Orion Project came hurtling back to me, along with British Columbia, Vancouver, George Dyson, orcas, wolves and canoes. So I decided to re-read it, and I’m so glad that I did. This father and son biography serves to remind and encapsulate Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous quote:

    Anything you can do, or dream you do, begin it:

    boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

    Now Baidarka: The Kayak by George Dyson is well and truly on my ‘to read’ list.

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• The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang

  • Very often mentioned and recommended Jordan B. Peterson, so I decided to get into it. I really don’t know what to say about this book, apart from please read it, it’s a must read! I think it basically outlines (from at least three very different viewpoints) what happens when a culture puts the welfare of the state before everything else, in the process loosing any sense of any individual’s self-worth, and, with this as a foundation, subsequently allows itself, without any question or objection, to be socially engineered and manipulated by its ruling class. It’s an historical warning and reminder that seems very relevant today, in light of the level of compliance that governments globally during the past few years, have overtly subjected and continue to attempt to subject the world’s population to. It also spotlights the unimaginable brutality of all war — a fact, once again, more than relevant to us all today. When reading this book keep very clearly in mind that the beyond inhuman atrocities outlined were committed by people essentially exactly the same as you and I.

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What have you been reading?

Any recommendations?

What’s on your ‘to read’ list and why?

I’m genuinely interested.

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Please note: I have another infotainment channel on substack, called The Song's the Thing! where I post podcasts, articles and content related to songwriting, guitaring, and music.🖋🎸🎵🎥🎙

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