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Observe & Rapport

by Kyle Brennan

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Tag: misery

Posted on September 29, 2023October 24, 2023

How to Guarantee a Life of Misery

We've all seen commencement speeches extolling the same old hackneyed advice: Follow your dreams! Be the change you wish to see in the world! Remain curious! It's often logical advice that sounds hollow coming from some billionaire tech entrepreneur or a famous Hollywood actor. Easy for you to say. Charlie Munger, the Vice Chairman of …

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by Kyle Brennan

“A man who is willing to venture into his fears without needing to run from them or force them into submission is a man who will find freedom where others are shackled.” As a longtime fan of the Jack Reacher series, I still get excited every time a new installment drops. Reacher has earned that kind of loyalty. This one gets a small bonus point for being set in Baltimore (where I went to college), so it was fun recognizing a few familiar neighborhoods along the way. I’m a big fan of short stories — particularly science fiction-y types a la Black Mirror. I first got introduced to the genre via Ted Chiang’s collection, Exhalation, from which the movie Arrival was inspired. A co-worker of mine recommended The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu. Many readers may know him from his translation of Liu Cixin’s novel The Three-Body Problem. I had a Barnes & Noble gift card, so I took a shot. I’ve read every self-help or “ten principles of success” book under the sun. So when a coworker gifted Lauren a copy of Quantum Success a few years ago, I rolled my eyes. Look at that freaking cover! I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know I’ve done my fair share of gushing about Jack Reacher—Lee Child’s 6’5”, 250-pound drifter who solves global crises with nothing but a toothbrush in his pocket. Dan Brown remains one of the best fiction writers of our generation. He burst onto the scene with Angels & Demons in 2000, followed by The Da Vinci Code, and has since turned Robert Langdon (played by the legendary Tom Hanks) into one of modern literature’s most recognizable characters. “Wisdom is the ability to go through life ready to change your mind.” My friends warned me that this book would be a grind — and god damn, they were right. At a whopping 1,079 pages (including 200 pages of tiny-print footnotes), it’s by far the most indulgent novel I’ve read (and that includes two Dostoevsky novels).
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— Observe & Rapport 📚 (@observe_rapport) December 28, 2022

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