D

Uneven narrator

Revisado: 12-12-20

Very slow and suddenly too fast narration, with weird intonations. I would have appreciated the book more with it wasn't for the narrator.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Phenomenal

Revisado: 02-20-20

Mind-blowing, habit-changing, health-improving book.
Hands down probably the best book I've read this year.

One pet peeve of mine is the replicated underreading and misunderstanding of psychoanalysis, which he reproduces when talk about dreams and Freud's insights (although for an American author, Mathew was actually ungrudging). Americans never quite understood and accepted that they might not be the lords of their own minds, as they would love to idealize in themselves. As Lacan puts it "Psychoanalysis is the science of language inhabited by the subject."

Anyhow, the book is AMAZING!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Wanted more

Revisado: 01-27-19

Too short. I have the feeling the much more could have been extracted from this man

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Pure Capitalist Ideological Mistification

Revisado: 01-26-19

This book is made to convince the common joe that he has any chance of participating in this exploitation forum. Also humanizes figures like bill gates as if billionaires are there to solve global economic issues rather than figure it out how to keep making obscenes amounts of money while inequality keeps rising - pure capitalist humbug pamphlet.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Slow-paced discovery of a new world

Revisado: 10-04-18

Michael Pollan does a good, slow, job (allows you to read at 1.5 speed without a problem) of introducing the general public to the wonders of mushrooms. I'm glad I listened to him.

Weak spots: too much/repetitiveness of the "mystical" experiences and terms, specially on the first chapter.

The best chapter, in my opinion, is the one that researchers and psychoanalysts debate the subject, sadly overshadowed by the focus on the awe and gossip world of early mushroom activists.

Oddly, the American public, pollan included, have no knowledge of Freud's theory, which would have help his analysis. Freud basically described and explain a huge part of what comes out of the mushrooms mystical experiences more than a 100 years ago.

Pollan does a great job on gathering and compiling information about a world that have been buried but that is trying to grow again.

The book is easy to read, fun to follow and, careful, will make you wanna try an illegal food, just for the thought.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Hidden biased making self evident conclusion

Revisado: 08-27-18

Pinker spends 800 pages (with tiny letters, scholarly) making a self-evident case for the reduction of what HE calls "violence". Yes, everybody should agree that, amongst other things, the State and cultural advancements (the printing press etc) societies drew back from aggression (against each other, children, animals, woman, gay, blacks...).

BUT that doesn't mean we experience something that Pinker is incapable of conceptualizing: the underlying violent struct that sustains our non-violent lives. A quick example would be how the laws and the way airport security has the power to subject us in the way to prevent a terrorist attack. Or let's say how slavery ended, but the imprisonment system has boomed as a direct correlation.

Apart from his own bias as a hardcore Liberal (and he doesn't acknowledge this, rather calling himself as a rational), Steven Pinker fills the gap between premise and conclusion with hysterical anti-communism.

The book does a good job of compiling evidence and connecting disparate facts. This book is a discussion catalyzer (especially if your book club consists of liberals and socialist/communists), so enjoy it but be ready to get angry (and linguistically violent) at him!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 6 personas