Friday, November 18, 2016

Review: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

I could only read this book in fits and starts, because it made me so anxious - that pit of your stomach feeling that this is not going to turn out well. Should we cry for humanity or cheer for whatever comes next?

View all my reviews

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Review: Calvin und Hobbes: Von Monstern, Mädchen und besten Freunden

Calvin und Hobbes: Von Monstern, Mädchen und besten Freunden Calvin und Hobbes: Von Monstern, Mädchen und besten Freunden by Bill Watterson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For me, the Calvin and Hobbes series is the best comic strip ever. Sometimes silly, often much more profound than I ever expected. I have read all of the strips in English several times and now I am reading them in German.

Thanks, Mr. Watterson.

View all my reviews

Review: In Defense of a Liberal Education

In Defense of a Liberal Education In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think this book has some good points, but they didn't seem to be clearly presented - for me, at least. One member of our book group agreed with me; another one completely disagreed; the rest were somewhere in between.

I grew up in an education-oriented home. My mother was a teacher; my father was a member of first the local school board and later the county school board. Together they helped found a statewide association for gifted children. Education through college was expected (and achieved) for all four of their children. But, in a way, those expectations and privilege meant that I didn't feel the pressure to go after education myself. It was just taken for granted. I enjoyed school and did well at it, but I never had to work very hard at defining what I wanted out of it. It was an expected path that I dutifully followed and did as was expected of me. Thus, some of the advantages this book touts, e.g., learning how to think critically and to write well, didn't seem like huge targets. I could write well and I wasn't sure what thinking critically really meant. I could analyze, I could make arguments. But I wasn't especially intellectually engaged.

In some ways, I think undergraduate education is wasted on new adults. They need to learn the liberal arts skills of thinking critically, writing well, making arguments verbally, etc., which is the point of this book, but they DO need specific job skills, too. As an older adult now, I crave a more active role in my own education. Some of the things that I wish I had more of are the very things that Zakaria thinks I should have gotten as a liberal arts student, but which I undervalued at the time. Now that I am retired, I am taking several short classes and I find them worthwhile. I would like even more. At my age, I am ready for seminars, for arguments about subjects.

I get a lot of this on Facebook, interestingly. There is also a lot of less useful stuff there, but I am finding a community of like-minded people to talk to there. Maybe Facebook is liberal arts education for some of us.

View all my reviews