User Profile

Paul Barker

pbarker@bookwyrm.social

Joined 4 weeks ago

Book-tooting from @pbarker@social.afront.org.

I use "read" to cover both books and audiobooks, don't hate me! I tend to read about 50% #SciFi & #Fantasy fiction and 50% non-fiction. Non-fiction interests include #Politics & #Economics (especially from #Leftist perspectives), #Evolution, #Philosophy, #Physics, #Religion.

I'm also an #EmbeddedLinux & #OpenSource software developer, #Humanist, #Leftist and quite probably #Autistic (though still on my journey of discovery).

Pronouns are he/him.

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Four Thousand Weeks (Hardcover, 2021, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 3 stars

The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief: if you live to 80, you …

A good alternative to traditional time management books

3 stars

I read this as the description really spoke to my todo-list overwhelm and feeling that everything needed to be done.

This book reminds you of the obvious - we're all finite, todo lists are always infinite. You were never going to get everything done anyway, so stop worrying about it. Instead, prioritise ruthlessly, choose things that you're willing to let go or fail at, and value the "now" over the unreachable future that you think will exist when you finish your todo list.

Overall, the book does what it sets out to achieve fairly well. Unfortunately it has a narrowly neurotypical view and doesn't really give space for those of us who struggle to let things go and often fall into absolutist thinking about their todo list. It also makes assumptions that everyone wants similiar things in a few places, especially when it talks about relationships - we don't all …

Another Now (2020, Random House Children's Books) 2 stars

Unnecessary Fiction

2 stars

Another Now compares the structure of the economy and the public sphere as it was when this book was released (just before the pandemic) with an alternative reality where broadly leftist policies were put in place in response to the financial crash of 2008.

I think the fictional framing here actually detracts from Varoufakis' ability to make his argument. Writing fictional characters is clearly not his area of expertise. I would have much preferred this to be another non-fiction book, without the unnecessary fictional elements.