In Short

During our 16h flight to Sydney, I, on an impulse, signed up for ShortForm:


The idea is, for $25/month, they provide short (a few pages) summaries of much longer books, eg for busy people. I read a couple and the quality seemed OK. In theory this seems like the BEST IDEA EVER.

In practice, I just cancelled it, mostly because, since that flight, I hadn't opened it once. While I like the idea, I also have a huge backlog of "proper books" that I really want to work through (though there is ZERO chance I will read more than 1/3 of so of them before I die, and even at that, I will have to become a hugely faster reader).

Also, this may not be fair, but I got the impression that ShortForm was mostly books I hadn't heard of, probably fine books, but I am somewhat more focussed on books that are either "famous" (I have a long mental list of even more books that I read in the past and want to re-read) or someone in particular recommended them.

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For the time being, I am giving up on "The Sound and the Fury". It is just too much work and thoroughly unpleasant. I am going to try and find "The Invisible Man", also on my list of "smart people books".

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I think I've mentioned before that my two favorite quotes are "History will be kind to me because I intend to write it" and "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened".

I want to officially add a third. I want to say this summarizes my entire world view, but it would be more accurate to say that I *would like this* to accurately summarize my entire world view. I'm still working on it. Anyway, here it is:

""For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong"

HL Mencken said it. He was a 20th century American journalist about whom I don't know much except at our Grade 12 grad, Eric Freeman used another Mencken quote, which is only notable for Eric Freeman having used it:

"The gods have treated me with excessive politeness."

Actually, I just looked it up in our 1983 annual, and Eric's version was somewhat more elaborate and, as far as I can tell, not accurate:

"The gaseous vertebrata who own, operate and afflict the universe have treated me with excessive politeness".

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