-
I don't know the book you're talking about, but there clearly is some kind of a market segment for shit that exists only so that its consumers can feel that they're being clever when engaging with it.
I would put about 70% of TED talks into that category, as well as anything by Yuval Harari, Ian McEwan and that muppet Alain de Boton. Stringing together just enough references from actual clever people to seem relevant, but ultimately adding nothing.
starfish&coffee-
I don't know the book you're talking about, but there clearly is some kind of a market segment for shit that exists only so that its consumers can feel that they're being clever when engaging with it.
Yeah, you've nailed it, that's exactly what this book is. I don't mean to suggest that the Blackmore book in particular is a stream of bigoted statements, because it's not - it's mostly just sophistry dressed up in the language of evolutionary science and genetics.
I felt much better after my tipsy rant in this thread and I might even feel brave enough to delete this awful little pamphlet from my kindle later, thanks to the encouragement of you all!
Since you mentioned Alain de Botton, I read his How to Think More About Sex a while back and it was quite the eye-opening experience. He was trying to build a philosophical theory about the nature of human love and desire, but instead he just splurted out all his own weird middle class fetishes and fantasies as illustrative of the human condition, bless him.
I mean, that said, I do like a bit of poseur-reading. Which is probably why I keep ending up reading these horrible fucking books all the time.
bothwell
I'm reading "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore. Fuck my tits, what a pile of garbage. It came strongly recommended by an individual for whom my respect is evacuating with every sentence.
I could probably get over the fact it's based on some idea that twat Dawkins had in the 70s, and the fact that she quotes that other twat Pinker on every other page, if only she had the least bit of rigour in her ideas. It's all flat statements of fact like "no other animal except homo sapiens is capable of imitation", and just as I'm about to eat my own face off in rage at her demonstrable bollocks, she'll devote an entire chapter to "well, yes, i know that actually there are all sorts of other creatures that are capable of imitation, but that doesn't count!".
Jammed with fucking woo and nonsense. It's basically a shit philosophy book masquerading as "Science". Get fucked. It's only 288 pages but it feels like I've been reading it forever.
Onto Lowboy by John Wray after this heap of shit. I hope it cheers me up.
I do need to read The Martian. Dammit read it years ago and recommended it, but I never got round to it. I could have been reading that instead of the Blackmore book! Fuck's sake, I've wasted a week of my life on this!