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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2939 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 20, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In honor of @EdenicFaithful's weekly Sunday reading question, what were your best reads of 2022? What did you enjoy or find interesting?

It wasn't the most "enjoyable" read - those usually involve more intellectual pursuits - but my "best" read this year in terms of impact has to be Jason Fung's The Complete Guide to Fasting.

Unless you already have an disordered relationship to food it might not be that useful, but it did help me take up fasting and lose 40 pounds. At least for now. Going through the last three years of books...it might be the only one that's had a meaningful impact on daily life rather than my thought processes.

Other than that, this actually wasn't a good year for insightful reads:

  • I did enjoy finally reading Island in the Sea of Time to see where the "ISOT" genre came from. It does hold up quite well and is still one of the top works in the niche.

  • Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now was good but obviously practically ineffective :P I guess you could say I don't disagree with anything it laid out but I haven't started agreeing yet.

Did Not Finish:

  • God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou - It's just not an audio-friendly book, so other books (fiction took priority. And my interest in Biblical studies ebbs and flows. Especially when I doubt Stavrakopoulou is going to go crazy and recommend something really novel in a popular audience-facing book.

  • The City, by Adrian Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is one of the few historians that can write, so his fiction series about a tough-skinned Roman centurion is pretty good on both basic craft and history. I just...wish he wrote different things. The earlier books were good, but they also had some cliched plot points (an example being the standard cross-class, forbidden love plot - it feels like Goldsworthy is writing to be easily adaptable when Hollywood comes calling) and I just didn't want to hike up another hill to get to the cool battle scenes.

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