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Victor Villas

villasv@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 5 months ago

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Matthew Walker: Why We Sleep (Hardcover, 2017, Scribner; Illustrated edition) 4 stars

Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, …

Decent advices oversold

3 stars

Like any 21st century pop science author, the premise of a long book about sleep couldn't be a down-to-earth argument of marginal health improvements. Instead, it doubles down multiple times on how this has to be, "undeniably", the most important yet neglected health knowledge ever - a common recipe for best sellers, promising immense rewards for memorizing a few key concepts.

Stripped down of the obvious marketing strategy, the over-the-top framing and all the speculative fluff mixed in with the actual research data, the book does a good work on hammering the need of caring for our sleep. And like any book of its kind, in the end the advice is as predictable and close to common knowledge as one would guess:

1) Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day; 2) Exercise at least 30 minutes, not too close to bed time; 3) Avoid caffeine …

Aubrey Gordon: You Just Need to Lose Weight (2023, Beacon Press) 5 stars

Very approachable yet uncomfortable as it should

5 stars

As someone who always carried a lot of ingrained anti-fatness beliefs and biases, reading this book was a great way to breach the subject. The author does a remarkable job at adding nuance to existing preconceptions and the didactic end-of-chapter calls to action and introspection were very fruitful - or so I like to think.

In the end I'm not "cured" of being deeply anti-fatness biased, but I am a little bit more aware of why some things just feel uncomfortable and why it's so hard to not be judgmental of people based on this single bodily characteristic. Something society has to grasp repeatedly, as if every new aspect it's an entirely different thesis, but Aubrey Gordon nails it: here's another structure of oppression.

Sarah Jaffe: Work Won't Love You Back (2021, PublicAffairs) 4 stars

An exhaustive exploration

4 stars

Probably not the book for me because I was already in agreement with pretty much the whole thesis, so revisiting arguments and anecdotes on "How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited" wasn't super engaging or entertaining. The book contains a lot more testimonials and personal accounts than I expected, which might make sense for a target audience but it's not my jam. For someone not so into history, sociology, anthropology etc this might be a heavy read, it really goes from ground up on many intersectional topics.

I think this book is a great introduction to the issue and I recommend a read to help recent startup/corporate survivors to process their grief. I did find the ending a bit watery; the author had hundreds of pages to deconstruct the employee identity but gave themselves a few paragraphs to try to end on a positive note. Not very successful to …

reviewed Animal Farm by George Orwell

George Orwell: Animal Farm (Hardcover, 2021, Pengiun Books Ltd.) 4 stars

When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master, Mr Jones, and take over …

Tragically Amusing

5 stars

Every time I re-read this book a new golden nugget appears, which is incredible considering how succinct the fable is. This time I found specially amusing the cat's engagement on the re-education committee and found myself laughing at the clever writing multiple times, like remembering old morbid humour jokes that still warrant a nose exhale.

Orwell's goal of putting to pen in simple terms a trajectory from democracy to authoritarianism through revolution is achieved with flying colours, but it is also quite tragically amusing how his work is mostly interpreted nowadays as a critique of anything anti-capitalist as a whole - despite Orwell himself being a democratic socialist. Given how far we are in the current globalized economy from the possibility of further communist revolutions and how close we became with strongmen nationalism, I'd say reading modern takes on authoritarianism like "How Democracies Die" by Ziblatt & Levitsky is more …