Peter鈥檚 Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2024

7,674

pages read

books read

Peter

Shortest Book

244

pages

Longest Book

1,102

pages

Average book length in 2024

590

pages

Most Shelved

357,329

people also shelved

Least Shelved

584

people also shelved

Peter鈥檚 average rating for 2024

3.4

Highest Rated on 欧宝娱乐

4.57 average

Peter鈥檚 first review of the year

liked it

Very solid overview of India's post-Independence movement, a great start to our year of India. That said, it was quite dense and very biased towards a pro-Congress, centralized view of power. The bias towards this worldview was not subtle, especially in the pro-Nehru apologetics. Overall, this is the best single book about the history of India as a nation-state, though it does leave the reader wondering: why is India a single country at all? Why ...more

笔贰罢贰搁鈥橲 2024 BOOKS

it was amazing

liked it

Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

Peter鈥檚 last review of the year

it was ok

For some reason, this book was handed out at Steve Jobs' funeral, which is how I came across it.

It's objectively a bad book - the structure, pacing and content is quite poor, and I found it difficult to pull out much meaning from the full book.

Structured chronologically, it's an autobiography of sorts which weaves through various minor miracles, astrological apologetics, watered down Hindu theology, strange Christian allusions and copious footnot For some reason, this book was handed out at Steve Jobs' funeral, which is how I came across it.

It's objectively a bad book - the structure, pacing and content is quite poor, and I found it difficult to pull out much meaning from the full book.

Structured chronologically, it's an autobiography of sorts which weaves through various minor miracles, astrological apologetics, watered down Hindu theology, strange Christian allusions and copious footnotes seeming to try and balance the miracles with pseudoscientific explanations.

I would not recommend this book - that said, I found it quite thought-provoking, especially on these three topics:
1. Hinduism is nothing if not syncretic - the work of Yogananda and his guru, Sri Yukteswar, seemed focused on absorbing two dominant paradigms (Christianity and Science) into the Hindu tradition, and it was interesting seeing the philosophical attempt to abstract these into a coherent worldview. While it felt heavy-handed at times, I was impressed at the level of scriptural and scientific knowledge shown by both gurus.
2. I was struck by the practice of knowledge creation that this book discussed - as we think about generating new knowledge, it's interesting to reflect on both the accomplishments and limitations of the disconnected Hindu asceticism described in this book. Thinking about the world is important, but interacting with it seems to be valuable as well, and there seemed to be a real aversion to tool use by the Hindu Gurus - without a microscope, could Hooke have imagined cells? Probably, but would it have been falsifiable? This strikes me as very relevant in thinking about how we should think about applying AI systems to knowledge creation (theory and experimentation are symbiotic activities).
3. It seems significant that he settled in Encinitas, CA. There is something fascinating about the way in which these ideas seem to have infected California after Yogananda passed. The pseudoscientific way in which these ideas were formed and crystalized seems in keeping with the decline of California, infected by an unproductive worldview in which thoughts were more important than acts. The meditative removal of the elite from their physical world seems particularly Californian, and it seems like no coincidence given the fact that Jobs himself seems to have fallen prey to these ideas.

I found this book particularly compelling in one final way - when you love a book, it's easy to understand why it's so famous and popular. But when you hate it, it also acts as a mirror - what am I missing? There is something about the timing that's particularly interesting - published in 1946, after WWII there are answers in the book which may have become particularly relevant as the US, and California as the most American of states, went through the ~30 year cycle after WWII, with booms and busts and the rise of an atheistic, anti-Christian search for meaning. Perhaps that's the context I'm missing... ...more

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