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10 November 2025
What am I trying to do with the book reviews here? I think I'm often trying to provide young people (or those not-very-experienced in whatever subject area who want to know more) with an introduction to interesting ideas, images, perspectives, etc., especially ones helpful for adherents of MSL/VMH. What this means is that I don't necessarily figure out if the sources are totally accurate (or as "totally accurate" as it's reasonable to expect of books) (they may be my only sources on their topics), which means that if you are seriously interested in a book I review, you probably should read more books on the relevant topic.
I see books, both fictional and non-fictional, useful for their non-fictional value (what they say about the world "as it is", in the public sphere's eyes, perhaps; what we normally mean by "non-fiction") and their fictional value (how they energize us to see what we already basically know or can come to know by reflection on our own experience, the ideas, images, and perspectives they suggest; what I see as the value of fiction).
I don't feel qualified to be a very confident judge of "non-fictional" content of books. Fiction books obviously raise questions about their non-fictional value, and non-fiction books are often wrong (by mistake, through motivated reasoning, or sometimes deception) and are necessarily not going to provide all of the truth (they only have a certain number of pages to work with -- if they are exhaustive, it will be in a narrow area), and often another non-fiction book of apparently equal trustworthiness will disagree -- leaving the reader to have to sort out both books' claims.
But the "fictional" value, the possibilities opened up by considering what if the book is true, or things like that, is more what I can judge, and more what I can promise the books recommended here offer.
To a certain extent, these book reviews are an opportunity for me to write my thoughts about the underlying topics they address.
For books that rely on plot (definitely fictional narrative works -- novels, short stories, and some poetry / song lyrics, etc. -- but also maybe some non-fiction narrative -- memoirs, some journalism, etc.) I will try to respect the desires of those who want to avoid spoilers. I will try to make my points without discussing plots in depth, but when it seems necessary to do so, I will encode the text that contains spoilers in "rot13". This looks something like this:
Sbe obbxf gung eryl ba cybg (qrsvavgryl svpgvbany aneengvir jbexf -- abiryf, fubeg fgbevrf, naq fbzr cbrgel / fbat ylevpf, rgp. -- ohg nyfb znlor fbzr aba-svpgvba aneengvir -- zrzbvef, fbzr wbheanyvfz, rgp.) V jvyy gel gb erfcrpg gur qrfverf bs gubfr jub jnag gb nibvq fcbvyref. V jvyy gel gb znxr zl cbvagf jvgubhg qvfphffvat cybgf va qrcgu, ohg jura vg frrzf arprffnel gb qb fb, V jvyy rapbqr gur grkg gung pbagnvaf fcbvyref va "ebg13". Guvf ybbxf fbzrguvat yvxr guvf:
To decode the text, you might use a website like rotencoder.com or another rot13 encoding/decoding site.