Sign up
Search
Advanced search settings

Search only in certain items:

Search results
All (2172)
Content
People
Apps
Books
Orbs
Movies
Music
Podcasts
Shows
Tabletop Games
Tech
TV
Video Games
YouTube Channels
Videos
40x40

Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated Turtles All The Way Down in Books

Feb 8, 2018  
Turtles All The Way Down
Turtles All The Way Down
John Green | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
9
8.4 (60 Ratings)
Book Rating
Excellent descriptions of mental illness (1 more)
Unique main character
Same essential plot as all of John Green's books (0 more)
Another excellent book from John Green
So what the cover description of this book doesn't explicitly mention is that Aza, the main character, has a pretty severe anxiety disorder. That's really the core topic of the book - her thought spirals and dealing with life while caught in them. I trust John Green to write about these because he also suffers from severe anxiety. He's talked about it in interviews and on his vlogbrothers Youtube channel. (I'm a big Green brothers fan - what's known as a nerdfighter.) So when John Green writes a character with anxiety, I believe that it's a realistic portrayal. I loved the integration of technology in the story - two characters don't just text each other, the text conversation is on the page, formatted differently, so it's obvious these are text messages. I always love books that do that.

There's not a whole lot I can say about the book without giving things away; a lot of John Green's characters tend to wax eloquently about philosophy and things outside themselves, and Aza doesn't do that because she's so trapped within her own thoughts. She can't think of the future or existential dread because she's too worried about the microbes in her stomach getting out of control and giving her diseases. Definitely a departure from his usual story, though it does fit his standard MO of Main character meets other character who profoundly changes main character's life in some way. (There's a third part that is also consistent with most of John Green's novels but it's a spoiler.)

I think the book is a really good book for anyone who loves someone with anxiety. Or even for those who have anxiety themselves, to see that they're not alone.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com
  
40x40

Cody Cook (8 KP) rated The Satanic Bible in Books

Jun 29, 2018  
TS
The Satanic Bible
Anton Szandor LaVey | 1976
2
5.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
LaVey echoes a view of man's value and of non-materialist religion which can be easily found in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche (especially Antichrist) and Ayn Rand. He is incredibly inconsistent on the subject of morality and shows only a cursory understanding of Christian history, doctrines, and the Bible.

LaVey does not view Satan as a person (nor does he view God that way), but as a representation of what man really is in his primal nature-- a violent and lustful nature which LaVey calls good, though he simultaneously argues that certain parts of it (that which would harm children or rape, for instance) are not good-- a dichotomy that he calls hypocritical in righthand path religions such as Christianity. Beyond this tension, he elsewhere seems to argue for moral relativism, creating a vicious circle of nonsense. Because good and evil are falsehoods and God and Satan are non-persons, the spells and rituals he creates are only symbols meant to harness our primal energies, sending them out to accomplish our goals (much like in the Hicks' Law of Attraction books or in The Secret).

A mix of equal parts tongue-in-cheek symbolism and outright charlatanism.

I suspect that this book's teachings would appeal primarily to two types of people: narcissists who want to seem edgy and angry people who have been harmed by institutional religion. In regard to the former, there are more thoughtful ways to be counter-cultural. In regard to the latter, an assessment of the intellectual weaknesses of this philosophy won't remove the hurt or pain they've been through, but hopefully an understanding that the kind of Christianity spoken of by LaVey is not genuine Christianity can remove some of the hatred they feel toward it due to the immoral actions performed by its claimed representatives.

Totally off-topic, but Lavey looks like a bald version of Evil Spock.