This is a short fitness novella about rucking. Rucking is the practice of hiking with a heavy backpack, or wearing a weighted vest. It is a lower impact form of cardio, which still burns plenty of calories.
I enjoyed this. Not only was it informative, but the author had a colorful writing style.
This is a work of Christian Apologia. I did not enjoy it. I made it to about 1/2 way through the book, before I dropped it. (Apologia is the genre of literature meant to provide intellectual heft to a religious tradition, and make it easy to understand for outsiders and laymen.)
‘Orthodoxy’ was first published in 1908, and it feels old.
It celebrates patriotism as a moral good, equating patriotism and nationalism towards the nation state with patriotism towards religion and God. I can’t help but feel that if this book was written even one decade later (aka after WW1), the author would have different opinions on this topic.
Credit where do, it does have the occasional flash of brilliance. I’ll link the Goodreads quotation page here so you can sample some of the author’s prose.
This book talks down to alternate religious traditions and philosophies, spitting acid on folks like Oscar Wilde and Friedrich Nietzsche. I’m fine with disagreeing with other philosophies; I object to how Chesterton never intellectually engaged with the people he disagreed with. It’s not intellectually useful to strawmen alternative viewpoints. I found it to be at times smug and self-satisfied, unwilling to question it’s own ideals.
The author Chesterton made baffling arguments that intellectuals and scientists were stupid and blind to the truth. It felt like the ‘Old Man Yelling at Clouds’ meme.
‘Orthodoxy’ spoke relatively little about Jesus, which is weird for a book about Christian Apologia. It spoke so little about the Messiah that the author’s message seemed to be conflating pre-WW1 Europe with Christian values. A person of reason and good faith can object to that conflation.
And finally, this book’s authorial voice is very blathery. It would often indirectly approach a topic, and use symbolism and metaphor to discuss it. There’s a difference between being cryptic for the sake of revering and maintaining the sacred, and just poorly written. I felt like this book landed on the poorly written end of the spectrum.
I don’t often DNF books. I gave up here. This book shows it’s rust.
This is a short nonfiction book about how modern culture had de-emphasized the importance of nature, leading to environmental degradation and climate change. It calls for a restoration of the holiness of nature. Armstrong evoked Eastern thought, and the Axial Age of religion.
I admire the author for writing this.
John Mendez- Book Reviews and More 