Peter Farness > Recent Status Updates

I was looking forward to reading (National Geographic and Outside Magazine's) Quammen's best known book. The writing in the second chapter, "Thirteen Gorillas," is uneven: discursive in parts with a few good vignettes and profiles. The wave/particle analogy at the end is pretty goofy. Maybe Quammen felt overshadowed by Richard Preston's sensational account of the same subject but didn't know what direction to take?

Brilliant!

“But [Barack] Obama professed little interest [in being appointed to the Court after his presidency]. Life as a Justice would be ‘too monastic,’ ‘too removed,’ he told friends.”

Okay, what’s he been doing instead that’s so great? I think aloof, monastic, and removed are all perfect words to characterize Barack Obama’s post-presidential career.

Interminable reading masochism, the least enjoyable reading experience I have had since I was a teenager. Someone paid $35 and gave me this for Christmas because I made the quip that I was "on the spectrum"? Okay, lesson learned. Commupance. I'll be more sensitive. Isaacson's boosterism and babbittry, and tacit disparagement of more common American entrepreneurs, laborers, etc., imbues the book and is repulsive.