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Experiment with Lindt and Hershey's chocolates. Lindt selling at 15c and Hershey's at 1c, sold at ~3:1 ratio. Reducing both by a cent caused the preferred ratio to invert, approx 1:3!

Ariely wants us to believe this is irrational, because the price difference is the same and rational economics would have us choose no differently. However, the difference between 1c and free is big, I don't have to fish for money!

Ch2 Anchoring & Adjustment or Arbitrary Cohesion.
First impressions, even if demonstrably false, correlates with future perception. "Our first decisions resonate over a long sequence of decisions."

Problem of relativity is that we consider things in terms of comparison rather than absolute. Driving 15 minutes to save $7 on a $25 pen seems more reasonable than driving the same distance to save $7 on a $455 tuxedo.

House purchases, attractiveness of partners in group settings, red herring subscription plans.

DNFing this one.

Meh.

Lame second trial. Pull one of three levers.

"bowels turned watery" for the third time this book.
What's this supposed to mean?

Feyra goes home, family is rich beyond belief, Nesta couldn't be glamoured so she knows the truth. Cool character change with Nesta and Elain. However, very short lived and pages later Feyra somehow finds a way back to Spring Court? Show, don't tell...

"Who wants someone around who's so covered in thorns?"
"Thorns?"
"Thorny. Prickly. Sour. Contrary."

This seems so forced, like when a movie character says the name of the film. Out of the blue.

The only previous mention of this was chapters ago where Feyra gets pricked by a rose thorn and bleeds, then Tamlin heals her with magic, removes the thorns, and puts the dethorned rose in her hair.

SPOILER: Tamlin learns Feyre can't read, so he shows her his "enormous, opulent study. Tomes lined each wall like the soldiers of a silent army..." He's gonna teach her!
However, if this book is written from first-person illiterate Feyre's perspective, why such flowery language? How? It's present tense, so even a transcription of her thoughts doesn't make sense with a rugged life devoid of literacy.

Lots of odd phrasing out of place for the moment. "A shiver spider-walked down my spine" without reference to arachnids. "A breeze set the branches rustling, a waterfall of white petals flittering down like snow" when it's supposed to be springtime, so why are leaves falling? Odd word choice that seems to be chosen for aesthetics sounds rather than meaning.

A book written in the language of a dream, of course it's incomprehensible. Don't take it seriously and it's very fun to read!

Rafe is extraordinarily dedicated to teaching and offers great advice for motivating students to learn. If you're so focused on teaching you don't realize you're hair is on fire then you're doing just fine.

Around 2200 years ago Eratosthenes measured the circumference of Earth, erring by a mere 200 miles. Earth was known to be spherical long before the Middle Age.

A heavenly canopy of water above the ground protects humans from UV rays, thus prolonging life to 900+ years? Angels possessing the bodies of men to procreate with women? That ark is much too small, especially for a voyage that lasted one year and ten days.

Alex made a lot of obvious mistakes and was severely under-prepared for the Alaskan brush. This depiction of him is starkly contrasted with the characterization in the movie.

How did he die? Why didn't he attempt to walk back but instead stayed and starved?

Genesis: How could light come before the sun/moon/stars? All animals were vegetarians before the fall of man? Pre-fall serpent had legs?

A mixture of helpful tips for beginning teachers, and painfully obvious advice that didn't need to be written.

Unsure how I feel about Alexander Supertramp. Wrecklessly naive? Overly idealistic? Doggedly righteous?

Talking animals, pseudo-reincarnation, time travel, visual diffraction of reality into two (and more) potentialities, goblins, mad scientists, shared dreaming, and a huge cast of characters so strangely connected that you'll forget how, exactly, one relates to another. If I were to start over I'd make a relational tree diagram to keep it all straight.

Already dozens of dozens of words I've needed to look up. However, the story is fairly linear and, despite the vocabulary, much more comprehensible than Gravity's Rainbow.
Also, takes place in a pseudo-reality where physics is fluid and history is open for interpretation.

Whatever you do, there is no good way out. Catch-22.

I got somewhat sidetracked by another book (or ten).

It felt as though two pieces of human wreckage had combined to form a whole human presence, as though they somehow restored to each other what had been stripped away.

Thus did my siblings and I learn one of the hard lessons of life: the best way to strip the allure and dreaminess from a lifelong dream is, very often, simply to have it come true.

[On Papa via Kade] He's just a grownup boy, stuck in a body, stuck in a life. And his life isn't wokring. It's not owrking at all. And he's got no father, his mother can't understand, he's got no one to help him fix it.

I don't answer. Let him see how it feels to pour your heart out to a statue.