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PaperclipPerfector  19hr ago (text post)   642 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 16, 2026

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So, what are you reading?

I've finished Al-Ghazali's Prophetic Ethics, the rather slim 20th volume of his Revival of the Religious Sciences. Most of it is a recounting of Hadith, and somewhat threadbare, since the previous 9 books had apparently dealt with the issues presented in detail. The best parts are all when Al-Ghazali speaks in his own voice, which happens rarely near the end. I suspect I'll be pouring over this one occasionally neverthless, looking for lessons to be drawn from its structure and focus.

What particular lessons do you take from al-Ghazali? Are there any highlights worth sharing?

Al-Ghazali was the first time that I actually felt like I understood some of the appeal of Islam.

One of the reasons for that has nothing to do with the books: I actually never knew about hadith (ie. recordings of what people have seen or heard from their Prophet), and it never occured to me that the often harsh tone taken in the Quran (which is narrated from the words of the angel Gabriel) might not necessarily reflect on Muhammad's actual disposition. One wonders if the reason why Muhammad preached at all was because he was terrified of the visions of the fire that he was shown, and he couldn't stand by and do nothing while others quietly walked towards such horrors. A large portion of Al-Ghazali's texts is just hadith and commentary on that, which gave me a very different view of Islam.

Beyond that, there is a clearer sense of the whole picture that can be gleamed. The example that comes to mind is in Principles of the Creed (book 2), where the theological differences between Islam and, say, Christianity become apparent very quickly. At least the Islam of his time taught that everything that happens is God's will, ie. that free will is not a thing, and the justification for punishing those who can do nothing otherwise is that God can do what he wills with his own possessions. Even if God chose to be completely unjust to all human beings, that would be his right. But the mercy of God can be seen in the way that he does not do this. We can see here the meaning of the saying of Muhammad "Surely, of the excellence of a person's Islam is that he leaves what does not concern him." When another person wrongs you, the origin of the wrong is actually God, and the purpose of the wrong is to test you, to see what you will do. Everything thereby becomes subsumed in a dialectical relationship with God:

...the most satisfied state of mind for the sagacious is to deem yourself alone in the universe with God, in front of you is death, the day of judgment, reckoning, heaven, and the fire; ponder deeply on what will serve you best in that which is before you and abandon all else. (#1)

It helps a lot that Al-Ghazali clearly possessed a highly intelligent mind. I find that the Quran is not as eloquent or sophisticated as other well-known religious texts, though perhaps it comes off better in Arabic. But it becomes clear through Al-Ghazali's treatment that the meaning of that scripture really is something that has intellectual substance. I have not read these books with a systematic intent to study them, so I've only learned through a kind of osmosis the habits and ways of thinking that are either implicit or explicit in the Islamic tradition. There is an idea of seeing what is plain, of moderation. And it is full of gems. Some of the quotes from Al-Ghazali himself (not hadith) that I bothered to copy down are:

A man who destroys himself seeking the well-being of others lacks intelligence. (#1)

For He who sent down the affliction sent down the remedy, provided instructions for its application, and provided the means to practice it. It is therefore forbidden to expose oneself to devastation by neglecting it. (#1)

Desire, partisanship, and hatred for his rivals and opponents overwhelm his heart and prevent him from seeing the truth, to the point that if he were asked, “Would you like God to remove the veil for you and show you firsthand that your rival is in the right?” he would refuse this in fear that his rival would rejoice in his defeat. This is the fatal disease that spreads through the land and the people. It is a kind of corruption caused by those who engage in partisan debate. (#2)

There are also deeper issues of Al-Ghazali's thought which I do not yet understand, like his connection to the Sufis and his emphasis on the heart, or his thoughts on what occupations are a communal duty, which fascinate me, but I'm not yet qualified to speak on. I, at least, have found it worth my time.

My mom wrote a book. Its narrative non-fiction. About one of our ancestors that lived during the civil war and was one of the founders of the DAR. Told through a series of letters that she wrote and that people wrote to her. Very depressing. People die a lot, and the war was horrific.

I'm trying to read it and give feedback as an early editor.

A Feast for Crows. Favorite ASOIAF book hands down. Don't mind the plot slowdown as much as some others, and although I clearly recognize that it is an inferior book to ASOS, I really enjoy the deeper interiority we get with the characters and the general theme of the book (what happens to a kingdom country when all the competent people are gone).

Also reading Los girasoles ciegos (the blind sunflowers) which was a gift from my Spanish friend. Definitely a challenge for my Spanish, but also enjoying it.

I was under the impression that among ASOIAF snobs, AFFC is considered the better book, but is liked less because it follows PoV characters most of the fandom doesn't care about. Meanwhile ASOS is considered a bit sloppy by George's standards because he wrote the whole thing relatively quickly and was just throwing stuff out there. Less attention to detail.

AFFC and perhaps to an even greater extent ADWD are much better written, at least at a prose level than the first three books. Much better dialogue, much more beautiful descriptions, much more interiority for all of our characters. The problem with both books is that they don't advance the plot very much and they completely explode the number of POV characters. Which would be fine is GRRM was willing to just Wheel of Time it and write 14 books, but he clearly isn't, so here we stand.

I remember liking A Feast for Crows, and not being able to finish A Dance with Dragons. I think that may be just a product of my own biases, though. For my money the 'good part' of A Song of Ice and Fire is the Westerosi feudal backstabbing, whereas all the side plots are generally bad. I do not care about Essos, Daenerys, Targaryens, or dragons. All of that is boring. The Night's Watch and the Others are... good, actually, but should be a different series. There is no need for them here. I think the biggest criticism I have of A Feast for Crows is that I think it's the one that introduces most of the Greyjoy characters, and I'm sorry, we do not need this massive excursus about Cthulhu-worshipping Vikings. Are they a cool idea, in the abstract? Yes. They're certainly better than anything featuring Essos or the Targaryens. But - focus, GRRM! Focus!

I think aSoIaF is, for me, a good example of one of those works where the author does not understand the appeal of his own writing.

Then again, judging from those TV shows they keep making, apparently there is somebody out there who likes the incest dragons...

Dance used to be my favorite book in the series. Last reread I could not stomach most of it. I think the Mereenese Blot (Adam Feldman) does a good job at unpacking the themes, and there is a lot of good stuff there. It's just not engaging in the way that the King's Landing stuff is. The North Plotline in that book is pretty good, but again it's because as you say, that George is focused on plotting and backstabbing.

Well, the things that worked best for me in the series were generally either individual character work, or the entertainingly convoluted web of treachery. The most popular characters in Ice and Fire are the ones that lean into both, right? Tyrion stands out. But even past that, if I think about characters I liked or chapters I looked forward to, there's Davos, Jaime, Brienne, or even to an extent Sansa. Cersei getting chapters for the first time was also appealing; really, all of the core Lannister trio are great. I liked characters with strong convictions and complicated personal loyalties who get mixed up in or who have front row seats to leaders making difficult decisions under uncertain circumstances. Jon and Sam had some of this as well, though as I said, in general I think the Night's Watch sections, though good, deserve their own separate novel and don't complement the rest of Ice and Fire.

Meanwhile I tended to get bogged down in or just want to skip past the Bran or Daenerys chapters, or even a lot of the Arya chapters, because they are not connected to most of the political action. All the vague mysticism and prophecy is not what GRRM does well, and Essos in general suffers from firstly being a land of absurd racial caricatures, and secondly being completely disconnected from and irrelevant to the action of the story. I just do not care about the Targaryens.

That was the last one I liked, looking back every plotline in A Dance of Dragons went in a way that grew less and less interesting, except Arya's. I watched the show to the bitter end hoping for Cleganebowl to salvage something. I had far more fun with the CKII mod where I could pick a far removed time and tell my own stories.

Perdido Street Station and I'm about to drop it 120 pages in unless someone convinces me not to

Endless fucking of a race of beings with bug heads for no reason isn't doing it for you?

I kind of wish I'd dropped it. It tries to come together into something to make the last few hundred pages worth it, but that something is just more misery.

It's full of good fantasy/sci-fi ideas and even though it's a bit ra-ra-workers-of-the-world-unite, it's well-presented/justified. You can skip everything else by that (obnoxious commie) author, but PSS is worth having read.

What I try to do these days when judging the worldview or ideology of a story is, rather than evaluating it on how much I agree with that ideology or not, I evaluate on how good a case the story makes for its ideology in the context of its own world.

I've read the series at a time when I had more tolerance for crappy writing, and thought The Scar was by far the most interesting of the bunch.

ra-ra-workers-of-the-world-unite

What would be the opposite of this?

I finished Hail Mary Project after having abandoned it some time ago. I still hated the prose but it's out (the movie) on Netflix and my sons and I can probably watch it and I wanted to have read the book. I could barely get through it due to the writing style, which clearly must be entertaining or funny for a lot of people but made me wish I was better at speed reading. The "Oh crud" type exclamations and the general sense of humor of the protagonist (and by implication, author) grated. What's that Stephen King analogy? "Like biting on tinfoil."

From the same friend I am now reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's okay so far but in a way that is making me realize the distance in our habits and tastes. He's a big gamer and reader of sci fi. I haven't really played a game since I quit Warcraft a decade or more ago and have only read a dozen or so sci fi books, most of those long ago. Unfortunately the narrative voice so far is somewhat similar to the protagonist in Wier's book.

The film is a much better film than the book is a book, I agree that the prose is a bit Smug 2012 Redditor.

Both of those are major memes on /r/bookscirclejerk for, I'm assuming, a pretty good reason

Maybe he listens to audio books. Both hmp and DCC have very good audiobooks.

Very possible. He gave me a big hardcover and knows I don't dig audiobooks.

About halfway through The Age of Diagnosis.

I went into the chapters on "long Covid" and autism pretty much knowing what to expect, and I wasn't disappointed. But I was genuinely surprised to hear that cancer screenings exhibit no net increase on all-cause mortality.

But I was genuinely surprised to hear that cancer screenings exhibit no net increase on all-cause mortality.

Zero chance this is the case.

While it's true you can find some research for some screening that aligns with this, anyone broadly making this claim without excessive qualification of the claim should be assumed to be a crank.

Ex: PMCID: PMC4412262

Link

The overall observed decline in CRC [colorectal cancer] mortality was 26% for 1975–2000. The model predicted that, with only changes in risk factors, CRC mortality would have decreased by 9%, explaining 35% of the observed mortality decline. Screening was estimated to have decreased mortality by another 14%, explaining 53% of the mortality reduction, while treatment added another 3% decline, explaining the final 12% of the observed decline in CRC mortality.

These modeling results strongly suggest that approximately 50% of the decline in CRC incidence and mortality between1975 and 2000 could be due to CRC screening. We have now used a similar analysis for the time period up to 2010 and again estimated that CRC screening likely accounts for about 50% of the reduction in CRC mortality over the more recent period.

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