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This scholarly yet accessible book explores how the concept of chosenness crops up in the three Abrahamic religions, each considered unitarily. Judaism emerged from Caananite polytheism and shows influences from this early phase, while the other two, Christianity and Islam, have been monotheism from their starts, sometimes militaristically so. In each there is a story of how God has chosen the followers in a specific fashion, and the author digs into how this is tied in to the belief in a single deity. The author is a Jewish scholar and Rabbi but one who makes the effort to understand the basis for the concept in all three faiths on their own terms. He is scrupulous about not arguing for one in favor of the others.

It was as though the idea of chosenness came to the early believers of each faith, not thinking of how it could lead to conflict with the wider world but instead for the strength it brought to the fledgling group. When it did cause debate with opposing teachers they would each draw from their own scriptures to make the case for a special relationship with the divine. The languages used were of course different and the specific terms underpinning their doctrine meant different things, sometimes making for misunderstandings. Also, when new groups within the faith communities formed, these would take their own sense of chosenness using a different emphasis to help distinguish their belief.

I did like how the author would identify the nuances without prejudice and without glossing over the differences. This book was good to spark thought within an individual about what it means to be chosen, in a fair-minded way.

I listened to this audiobook on the advice of someone who'd read the trilogy it is part of. I had mentioned to them that I found the second book The Scar lacking to the point where I failed to finish reading it and they said this third volume had more in common with the first book Perdido Street Station, which I had liked. The action takes place after these other books in a setting that has elements of the weird and of magical realism with a set of characters distinct from those other books. It is more overtly political as it depicts the struggle between the upper classes of New Crobuzon who use the city militia to maintain their dominance and the working classes. The sympathis are with the revolutionary sentiments of the latter. The story bounces between a number of revolutionaries, taking place both in the city and across the continent, over a span of years. the Iron Council is a train which has been hijacked by a crew of leftists (they lay track in front of it and pull up the track behind it so the thing can travel to any part of the land) which has become a powerful symbol of the opposition to the elites. There are various forms of magic, strange intelligent species living in tension with one another, and the mutilation of convicts to produce an enslaved class of workers, all of which combines to give the impression of a dream world. There are also disturbing scenes of sex and violence along the way. It is all a heavy load for the reader to make sense of and there were stretches where I would lose my way as the lush prose just carried on. By the end, though, all the machinations did combine to produce an emotional climax that does not try to reach a settled verdict on who was good and who was evil.

I would say that I admired parts of this book, more than enjoyed it as a whole. Perhaps it would have been easier for me to digest presented as a set of linked stories rather than as a hulking novel. There might have been a single theme buried among the axtravagance on display but it wasn't on the surface as far as I can tell.

This book has been on my Currently Reading shelf for a couple days short of thirteen years now. It wasn't just the bulk of the book that was blocking me from getting through it, since I have made it through bigger ones in a small fraction of that time. It is the style of scattered anecdotes meant to illuminate the forty-eight precepts in one way or another, not meant to cohere in any kind of simple whole. Maybe it's because power really is so slipper to gain and tough to keep that there have to be so many strategies to prop it up. My own preference as a person is not to dominate, not to crush opposition, nor to build a glorious power base so even if these rules really are applicable I was never going to find them practical for my own life. I am, however, interested in the psychology of those people who crave the top position in society, partly just to be able to protect the rest of us from their trickery. Also, some of the historical vignettes contained here are clever in ways many of us never knew or have forgotten. (Others, I think, were included to make the author seem smart.) But there is a lot of padding around the exciting bits and I would have been happier if the list could have been truncated at twelve pithy essays. So I am sticking with my middling rating of this, posted on that other book rating platform in 2016. To hate it on moral grounds I would also need to hate Machiavelli's writing, which I do not. I just feel it gained a bigger profile than it merited.

This book is a collection of short essays informal in tone, but with extensive sources cited, each considering some feature of our world whether man-made or natural, interpreted through a human lens. The word 'anthropocene' in the title refers to the geologic Epoch we are in now where the the changes the planet is subjected to are dominated by the influence of humanity occupation of its surface. So yes, of course, there's climate change, there are mass extinctions along with global pandemics, but then there are also works of art, scenes of astonishing natural beauty, and bizarre social manias that can only be understood through a human cultural viewpoint. Each essay ends with a numerical rating of the subjective goodness of the subject in question where five is the most excellent and one denotes something that is very barely tolerable. The author takes his review duties fairly seriously, paying attention to all of the important features of each subject, yet not taking his own importance too seriously. Like many others, I got to know him through his videos on YouTube and consider myself a fan. The narrative is generous with personal anecdotes sometimes veering off into tangents which I think it is fair to say stem from life experiences following anything but a straight line path. He has an appealing self-deprecation towards himself even though he's accomplished a lot and has millions of people who care about his views toward even the most trivial subjects. One funny thing about these little essays is that he makes virtually no reference to his YouTube presence which you would think is going to occupy a large fraction of his attention. Maybe he crafts these as a sort of a an antidote to the sometimes overbearing influence of that platform. He personifies the humanist, with his most moving essays talking about transcendence and defeat and insight and compassion both for other people and for our own communities. Like many of us he struggles in the face of the challenges that face us collectively but counters that with a recognition of deep gratitude to the luck that allows us even to occupy our place. In this way he cuts the sense of doom with a strong dose of optimism, which I find appealing. As a fiction and nonfiction writer he's enormously accomplished, with a legion of admirers. Here his voice comes through. When he writes about sickness, pain, loss he he provides a light for those of us experiencing similar feelings. But I don't want to leave the impression that this is a solemn book, since a number of the essays are on subjects that I have virtually zero interest in and yet he tries to find a way to convey relatable aspects to me. Personally I was touched by seeing the quotations from poetry among his essays which have played a formative influence on him. An excerpt from John Ashbery's long poem Portrait in a Convex Mirror took me by surprise with how it suggested something I had missed.

Is this a life-changing book? I think some of the essays are a bit slight, kind of tossed off, but there are some real gems there that strike you during first reading and invite a closer re-reading. I hope this isn't the end of the line for these little review essays of his so that he can keep on surprising and entertaining us with many more.

The third and last installment in The Final Architecture space opera series had some high expectations to meet, with a story hinging on the nature of all reality and the stakes set to the possible extinction of all intelligent planet-dwelling life in the universe. We readers have suffered along with the crew of the Vulture God who just happened to sit right at each crucial intersection of galactic forces warring with the unknown menace out of Unspace and by now are wondering what agonies they will be put through in this last outing. I feel like the story comes off exceeding my hopes, adding intriguing and unexpected plot details as all the twisted plot strands get tied up. The heroes don't get out of this completely unscathed but the losses are all invested with meaning for the reader, and the characters who make it through intact are changed by the trial in a convincing manner. Some antagonists do get put in their place too and the whole mystery behind the uncanny universe-building setup basically holds up thanks to some ingenious prose work. It's a thick book but I felt pulled through faster as the climax neared. Half of my pleasure, as I mentioned in my earlier reviews, was due to the virtuosic narration by the audiobook narrator Sophie Aldred. Top rating to a fun deep space thriller which held up its end of the bargain on so many levels.