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The Study Newsletter #005
by Ivaylo Durmonski
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A bimonthly bookish newsletter for lifelong learners and wanderers alike. Full of timely, wise, and deliberately short assortments ranging from book recommendations and summaries, articles, introduction to thinkers, thinking concepts, and more. All shaped specifically for our morally confused and widely distracted age.
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Hello online friends,
The best thing about having digital books on your phone is that you can read regardless of your current location - sitting, lying down, waiting, walking, even running (why not?).
Digital books are almost faultless.
But this is exactly where the problem lies: they are almost faultless.
You can read them everywhere. But you can also not read them everywhere.
When you choose to read on your phone - like me - you also choose to battle a refreshing desire that continuously tries to make you do other things on your device - reading often being perceived as the least exciting.
After all, there is simply too much happening on a device. And too much possibilities of something else happening. Either a notification will interrupt your flow or a sudden thought will urge you to check "something else" that seems more important.
The contract you sign when you get a hard copy is different - there is no escape route. There is no "something else" to check. It's only you against the book. You with the book. Fully immersed in the text.
As a person who is primarily reading on a device now, a lot of times I go back to my physical copies. They are harder to transport, but offer a much better reading experience.
What about you? What's your preferred reading format?
(If for some reason your email client decides to clip the email, click here to see the full content).
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Note for members: Accessing your account now doesn't require a password. You can now sign in using only your email. Simply type your email and a login link will be sent to your inbox. Of course, passwords are still available for those who want them. Reply if you have questions.
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- [NEW] Shoe Dog by Phil Knight: A brave story about Nike, told by the founder of Nike, Phil Knight. How a kid in his mid-twenties decided to pursue a crazy idea. How, despite the odds and without a clear initial goal, plus constantly fighting debt, he transformed a small local Oregon shop into a billion-dollar enterprise. Shoe Dog is not a business book, it’s a breathtaking, heartening story of a company, an ideology, that after enduring years of hardship, became a worldly recognized brand.
- Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins: Can’t Hurt Me is a book that tells a brutally honest story of the tough life of David Goggins. How he transitioned from an overweight thug to an unbreakable Navy SEAL who’s running 100 miles for breakfast. What are the lessons learned from this remarkable transformation and tips on how you can become better, faster, stronger yourself.
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Support my work: My newsletter is sponsored by my dearest members. If you want to support my work and to get access to the full summaries, you can consider becoming a member yourself. This way, you'll gain access to everything on my site.
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Interesting books I recently added to my reading list (and hopefully will read at some point):
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- Science Of Storytelling by Will Storr: Our brains can't make sense of all the information in the world, so we simplify it with narratives. This empirical look at how we do that will make you a better storyteller and a more effective communicator.
- The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch: The wide-ranging nature of what the book covers is described as incredible. David Deutsch talks about a lot of things: epistemology, quantum mechanics, multiverse theory, infinity, mathematics, the reach of what is knowable and what is not knowable, universal explanations, the theory of computation, what is beauty, and more.
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To Read |
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How Children Fail by John C. Holt
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A scientific approach to how children learn in school. How can teachers adjust their methods to better transmit information. And, how to better educate your kids. Though written more than 70 years ago, this book is one of the best reads about the problem with contemporary education - present even today.
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Interesting words from books and around the web:
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- Amor Fati (noun): A Latin phrase that may be translated as "love of fate" or "love of one's fate". It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary.
- Glossolalia (noun): Also known as "speaking in tongues" is a practice in which people utter words or speech-like sounds, often thought by believers to be languages unknown to the speaker. Psychologists suggest that it's a behavior arising from participation in a mass religious gathering.
- Tangent (noun): An abrupt change of course; A straight line that touches but does not cut into a curve; A small upright flat-ended metal pin at the inner end of a clavichord key that strikes the string to produce the tone; The trigonometric function that for an acute angle is the ratio between the leg opposite to the angle when it is considered part of a right triangle and the leg adjacent.
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Albert Camus |
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Albert Camus was an extremely handsome mid-20th century French-Algerian philosopher, author, and journalist. Born in Algeria to French Pieds Noirs parents. His citizenship was French.
Philosophically, Camus's views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism, a movement reacting against the rise of nihilism. He is also considered to be an existentialist, even though he firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime.
Camus won the Nobel prize for literature in 1957 – and died at the age of 46, inadvertently killed by his publisher Michel Gallimard, when his Facel Vega sports car they were were in crashed into a tree. In his pocket was a train ticket he had decided not to use at the last minute.
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Big ideas: |
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- Absurdism: He defines the human condition as absurd, as the confrontation between man's desire for significance, meaning, and clarity on the one hand – and the silent, cold universe on the other. He continues that there are specific human experiences evoking notions of absurdity. Such a realization or encounter with the absurd leaves the individual with a choice: suicide, a leap of faith, or recognition. He concludes that recognition is the only defensible option.
- Revolt: Camus is known for articulating the case for revolting against any kind of oppression, injustice, or whatever disrespects the human condition. He outlines the difference between revolution and rebellion and separates the modern form of rebellion into two modes. First, there is "the movement by which man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation." The other mode, historical rebellion, is the attempt to change the world. In this attempt, the rebel must balance between the evil of the world and the intrinsic evil which every revolt carries, and not cause any unjustifiable suffering.
- Happiness in facing one’s fate: Sisyphus - punished for his self-aggrandizing craftiness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down every time it neared the top, repeating this action for eternity - demonstrates that we can live with “the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it.” For Camus, Sisyphus reminds us that we cannot help seeking to understand the reality that transcends our intelligence, striving to grasp more than our limited and practical scientific understanding allows, and wishing to live without dying. Like Sisyphus, we are our fate, and our frustration is our very life: we can never escape it.
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Notable works: |
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- The Stranger
- The Plague
- The Rebel
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From my desk:
- What Is Self-Regulated Learning and Why Is It Important? Mark Twain famously said, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” More than 100 years later, that’s still the case – or at least it should be. We should not, let the material we study now, or years ago when we were in school, satisfy our appetite and our thirst for knowledge.
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From around the web:
- Stab a Book, the Book Won't Die: "We buy a book, we know what we’re getting. There is no other “business model” at play. No other information being (necessarily, relatively) sold. This clarity of contract is especially lucid in physical form. The book has edges. The transaction has edges. The transaction completes. Given time, we complete the book. It has an ending. Contracts are clear. Usually, there’s no tracking."
- 100 (Short) Rules for a Better Life: "63. Never check the price on a book. Just buy it if you think you’ll read it; 79. Print out good advice and put it right in front of your desk, or wherever you work everyday; 80. Remember: Nobody is thinking about you. They’re too busy thinking about themselves."
- Your output depends on your input: "In your life, you will be evaluated on your output. Your boss will evaluate you on your output. If you’re a writer like me, the audience will evaluate you on your output. But your input is just as important. If you don’t have good input, you cannot maintain good output."
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Optimistic Nihilism |
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Nihilism is a belief that there is no intrinsic meaning to life. Life is meaningless, pointless, futile. Put another way, there is no point in what you're doing because one day you will be dead and no one will remember you anyway. Optimistic nihilism takes this grim view of life and gives it a sunny, happy face. Yes, most things are meaningless but that's a good thing. That means that you don't have to worry about small disasters and appoint them a value - what someone said about you, for example. Because there is no inherent meaning in life, there is no grand scheme, there is no reason not to give everything you have and try to create your own meaning, your own universe. A place where you'll be happy.
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"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
- Murakami
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I've slightly redesigned my site and I am in the process of updating the cover images of my articles and summaries - a black background for the articles and simpler covers for the book summaries. Sadly, it will take me a little longer than I originally planned because I have more than 200 pieces of content on my site.
Of course, I'm doing this for a reason: the site (should) load faster now and thus more enjoyable for browsing.
Let me know if you encounter any errors.
Have a great rest of the week!
Regards,
Ivaylo Durmonski
P.S. This newsletter is free but not cheap. If you’re feeling extra thankful and want to support me (+ get access to everything on my site) my membership program is the best way to contribute to my project.
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