Eliza > Recent Status Updates

Very interesting and poetic book, but chapter nine took a wrong turn, rejecting the mothering “ambivalence” some women experience and some feminist writers describe. It is also quite clumsily “argued” against

After adoring Less 1, I find it quite difficult to delve into Less 2. I can’t put my finger on the “why”, but perhaps the large resumes of the previous volume are partly to blame. I’m already a fifth into the volume, and it still feels like we are recapping…

Reviews were warning this book was a tad technical and not really an attempt to vulgarisation…I didn’t think it will be a problem, since I have a PHD, I often read technical research articles, and often I enjoy it. But the truth is the writing is indeed quite technical and bores the hell out of me!

“But like the Swiss, it (the tent) was neutral; it did not love him back.”

I’m so excited this book is out! I adored Less 1! Didn’t even expect to get a Less 2! Such joy…

The story is semi-interesting, but there isn’t much suspense. You can easily predict a few chapters in avance what the various « reveals » are.

The wedding planner complains drunk guest want to visit super old cemetery on an island, even though she is the one who set up a wedding tent RIGHT NEXT to it.

People complained about the length of the novel and it’s very descriptive prose, but 26% in, I feel we are barely getting started and the remainder pages are well justified. The detailed painting of each scene and conversation is time well spent. Not every book must rush through it’s plot as if it’s a blockbuster.

A bit repetitive here and there but it has convinced me to try to give the “meta cognitive learning strategies” class to my students this year and see how it goes.

Just finished Carol Dweck’s mindset and was left very unimpressed (a 2* review) and I needed something with more actionable knowledge it in. Only at the beginning, but this book already has more meat on it’s bones.

Why does the diagram of Nigel Holmes arrive basically at the end of the book?! Use it in the INTRO!

Some Internal Family Systems logics around here. But again, throwing difficult therapy ideas out like they are easy peasy to apply all by yourself.

The fixed mindset “self” transformation speaks about insanely difficult mental changes that take quite some time under the guidance of a therapist, as if it’s something mildly difficult to do by yourself relatively quickly. I feel her tone is overly optimistic / simplistic…

I think it’s a bit late in the book that Dweck starts talking of how we are all naturally a mixture of the two mindsets and now we should be careful into when we get triggered into the fixed one. This feels like it should have been in chapter two, not buried at the end of chapter 7.

I find the parallels to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button too large to miss. It’s incredible that the author doesn’t think the screenwriter ripped him off big time. It can’t be just a coincidence. Too many things in common. From the “technical aspects”, to the melancholic tone of the book, to the one true love etc…

Second book (almost) in a row that manages to turn global warming in a positive plot point. What does that say about us as a society?