Apolo Ohno-- ZERO REGRETS!!!

AW YEAH WHAT AN INSPIRING TITLE!!!

The rest of the book is OK. The problem with it is that Apolo didn't have to overcome any super-tough and challenging obstacles in his familial and emotional life to achieve his dreams. Sure, he grew up without a mom, but he never makes this out to be a super big deal. There are only really two events that try and fit the "monumental challenge" criteria:

One, he ran away from home, once, because his dad wanted him to go to a speed-skating training camp and he wanted to party.

Two, he had crappy committment, and his dad dropped him off at a cabin for nine days, where he called his dad and decided he wanted to stop being an idiot and get down to work.

Sadly, these things just make him look like kind of a crybaby, rather than a story to inspire millions. I would recommend people find more inspirational books instead of reading this. Nonetheless, the story was quite an interesting read if you want to find out about Ohno's life and accomplishments.

P.S. Apolo is indeed quite arrogant. I thought it was funny, but it really annoyed my mom, so if you're against that kind of thing, you may have trouble with this book.

Personal Impressions

This book consists of portraits of people whom Isaiah Berlin, in almost every case, knew personally. Some, such as Chaim Weizmann, Felix Frankfurter, and Aldous Huxley, are very well known. The portraits focus on personal characteristics rather than achievements and each is written in vivid, highly engaging language that conveys thoughtful impressions of the characteristics that make people interesting or compelling as friends, or statesmen, or contributors to the worlds of learning or the arts. Berlin has keen insights and a very appreciative view of others' personalities, whether they be congenial or prickly. His comments on Pasternak and other Russian writers of the 30's through the 50's show many individuals acting with tact and courage in the face of official intimidation up to and including liquidation. For me, his portraits of Churchill and Roosevelt (he knew neither personally) shed new and very interesting light on how these allies so powerfully affected events in Western society and World War II. (Berlin does not say this directly, but his portraits define Churchill and Roosevelt as quintessential hedgehog and fox, respectively). Just a couple delightful excerpts: Of the historian L.B. Namier:

Hence those who met him were divided into some who looked on him as a man of genius and a dazzling talker and others who fled from him as an appalling bore. He was, in fact, both.

Berlin judges Boris Pasternak to be a genius and explains his criteria:

I can only say this: the dancer Nijinski was once asked how he managed to jump so high. He is reported to have answered that he saw no great problem in this. Most people when they leapt in the air came down at once. "Why should you come down immediately? Stay in the air a little before you return, why not?" he is reported to have said. One of the criteria of genius seems to me to be the power to do something perfectly simple and visable which ordinary people cannot, and know that they cannot do - nor do they know how it is done, or why they cannot begin to do it. Pasternak at times spoke in great leaps; his use of words was the most imaginative I have ever known; it was wild and very moving.

Uno cosi cosi, One Great

Read two mysteries recently. One was The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, recommended by our Italian tutor. This was set in Sicily and was a light, enjoyable crime story, introducing Inspector Montalbano, versus the criminal results of a mixture of passion and ambition. Short, quick and fun, but not particularly special. The other was another of Upfield's Bony mysteries, Death of a Swagman. These are invariably delightful and absorbing. To be perfectly honest, I could level a couple small complaints; for example, sometimes they wrap up a little too quickly to be convincing or fully satisfying. But for fascinating sketches of Australian outback and warm, interesting and, in this case, highly comic, human interactions, they're unbeatable. I will be very sad when I've read the last of them!

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy

Wow! Many thanks to Colin for recommending this fascinating, compelling science fiction novel (the first of a trilogy) describing the colonization of Mars.
Many significant Earth-bound themes are thrown into sharp relief, accentuated by the open possibilities for establishing a new (?) world order on Mars. Some of these issues are represented by key members of the First Hundred to settle on the planet: Idealism (John Boone) versus political manipulation (Frank Chalmers), eco-preservation (Ann Clayborne) versus aggressive terraforming (Sax Russell), and revolutionary democratic forms of government (Arkady Bogdanov) vs. control by transnational corporations (Phylis Boyle). The characters are interesting individuals and Mars is depicted in astonishing and deeply-researched detail as hostile, extraordinarily strange, and awe-inspiringly beautiful.

Wings Above the Diamantina and Bony Buys a Woman

Wonderful descriptions of life in the Australian outback + especially intriguing puzzles + the delightful character of Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (aka Bony) + warm interactions between people = two more very enjoyable Upfield mysteries!

The Hedgehog and the Fox

"The fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This fragment from a Greek poet is the starting point for Isaiah Berlin's essay on Tolstoy's view of history, as it is presented in War and Peace. Berlin offers an intriguing interpretation of these characterizations, suggesting that they

mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who who relate everything to a single central vision.......and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory.

He further suggests that

The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen and Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Moliere, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce are foxes.

Because it is amusing to classify authors, colleagues or friends according to this rubric, this part of Berlin's essay is fairly well-known. I started reading this (lengthy) essay many years ago, enjoyed the "game" but then found the following discussion of Tolstoy's view of history to be inpenetrable and put it down. But I had not then read War and Peace!

As my review of War and Peace suggests, I found Tolstoy's views of history interesting, but presented at such length and so argumentatively, that they quickly became an annoying distraction from the narrative - but Berlin is another story! He presents Tolstoy's views in an engaging, fascinating light and offers his own analysis of why it is so difficult to classify Tolstoy as either a fox or a hedgehog.

My recommendation: Read the first three pages of the essay for insight into the intriguing "game" - or read all of War and Peace first, and then enjoy the meat of Berlin's essay!

Awaken the Giant Within

LOVED IT. While Tony Robbins DOES do infomercials, he apparently has some good stuff to say. Go figure.

The book is basically a breakdown of Robbins' system for taking control of your life and making your dreams come true. It gives you tons of tools for managing every aspect of your life, such as "transformation vocabulary", "global metaphors", the "Neuro-Assosociative-Conditioning model" (a mouthful) and many more.

I think an even better way of describing this book is this: it's the exact opposite of "The Power of Now", which I reviewed in an earlier post. This book is longer, more complex, and advocates a system polar to "The Power of Now". Instead of eliminating pain, as "The Power of Now" suggests, Robbins tells you to use your pain as a motivator to change your life.

I'd highly recommend the book to anyone who eats up self-improvement texts, no matter the size, shape, or form. For anyone not in love with the genre, if I were you, I don't even know if I could get motivated enough to get to the part of the book where Robbins teaches you how to get properly motivated.