Some thoughts, and reservations
343899
Terrible, not at all what was promised....
Quality of the item was subpar, as it was never shipped!
This item may work for vapor houses, but will not work with physical use!
2365083
The first chapter presents the idea that in making optimal decisions we should take the costs of making decision into account, and that therefore in making decisions what we actually do is not optimize taking everything in existence and for all eternity into account, but only a small number of variables. This leads to a discussion of the importance of emotions for focusing our attention.

Something that I don't understand is what Simon says on p. 35, that "The intuitive theory, I have argued, is in fact a component of the behavioral theory". It seems like the intuitive theory is just an addition to the behavioral theory, and I worry therefore that I am missing something.

In the second chapter, on pp. 66-72, Simon explains how the process of evolution optimizes locally but not necessarily globally. He calls this a "myopic kind of rationality".

I think this book is well worth reading, and I intend to read more of Simon's works. The following are two insightful statements from the first chapter.

"We live in what might be called a nearly empty world- one in which there are millions of variables that in principle could affect each other but that most of the time don't.... Perhaps there is actually a very dense network of interconnections in the world, but in most of the situations we face we can detect only a most number of variables or considerations that dominate" (p. 20)

"If I were in a position where I had to defend the role of the humanities in education, to provide an argument for something like the traditional liberal arts curriculum of the early twentieth century, I would argue for them on the grounds that most human beings are able to attend to issues longer, to think harder about them, to receive deeper impressions that last longer, if information is presented in a context of emotion- a sort of hot dressing- than if it is presented wholly without affect."  (p. 32)
628321
I have mixed feelings after finishing the book. While my mind feels enlightened with all the reading and the ideas exposed, at the same time it left me with a confusion as to what exactly the author intention was. He gave some hints of his intentions at the conclusion but still I am kinda lost. My suggestions for any future edition or re-writings are: 1) highlight the true words of the characters, so we know what really came from them; and 2) find other place of meeting people rather than the purgatory.
787869
The view is not as clear as I would have expected or desired.
1613279
I quite enjoyed this book -- more than I thought I was going to.

What I found frustrating was the author's reluctance -- no doubt arising from a poetical cast of mind -- to divulge quotidian details of how he did it.

What I mean is that the majority of people who would pick up a book like this are those who fantasize about themselves being able to pull off the the shoulder of life and spend 6 months in an isolated cabin.  But there are several issues to be considered.  It's hard for me (you too, I imagine) to enjoy the author's philosophical musings until he at least implies how he resolved these issues.

Mainly, where did you get the money to do something like this?  Were your parents paying?  Did you save up, like Jodi Ettenberg?  (There's actually a book out there -- "A Forest, a River, and Me" -- where the author does essentially the same thing as Tesson but makes it clear from the get-go that all this was made possible by virtue of his having made a pile in the stock market right before living in the cabin.)  Did you have an apartment during this time?  Was somebody else living in it or did it simply stand empty?  Or did you put all your stuff in storage?  What about your bills?  Did you automate payment?  What about medicines?  Did you need any?  Did you stock up?  And how did you find out about the cabin?  On the internet?  How did you haul boxes of stuff way over to Siberia?  On a plane?!  Did you have a friend who essentially set this up?  If so, how did you meet them?  And since when do you speak Russian?

No answers to these questions are implied.  Why don't authors answer them? Sheesh.  Instead, the author pretty much gets right into his philosophical musings:  "There was a titmouse at my window," etc.  I do not find this satisfying.  It's no problem to me if you're rich:  I'd just like to know so those of us down here working 9-5 jobs can put it out of our mind and focus on your philosophical musings.  (I remember the author's reluctance to divulge the source of his funding also ruined another perfectly good book:  "A Year in Provence."  Where the heck did you get the money for that?!)

To be sure, Tesson's philosophical musings are not unwelcome.  But for me to get a groove going with them, other questions need to be answered.  Even had he answered the questions above, there would still remain logistical questions about life in the izba:  Did it have electricity?  Running water?  Where did you get drinking water from?  Was there an indoor toilet?  An outhouse?  If there was an outhouse, did you have to bundle up to go outside every time you needed to make number two?  And what about your laundry?  Did your cabin have a washing machine?  Did you wash your clothes in the sink?  A creek?  Did you simply wear the same clothes for all 6 months?  And on and on.  All this would be of interest to me.

If I ever do something like this, I'm going to make darned sure the reader knows how I did it.  That way I think they'll enjoy my poetic reflections a lot more.
1292963
There are some gems in here if you have the time and inclination to discover them. As a western philosopher, the premise runs counter to my own work and guiding force, that being the identification and practice of a noncontradictory moral structure for the preservation and enjoyment of life. Best of luck on your road to enlightenment.
4589009
I found this book enjoyable but uneven; perhaps I will feel differently on a second or third reading.  Some of the poems were quite good.  I did purchase the book because of one particular poem I remembered over the years; because of finding that sought-after poem, I am happy I bought thisbook.
1224652
Some of it I didn't care for. But there are definitely some nuggets of thought well worth reading, and remembering.
4847770
a book for skeptics of large organizations and their conflicts of interest, may appear to be extreme in its positions, but worthy of consideration. my own judgment will wait until I can read some of the referenced jour. articles.
2471457
I started into this book with high hopes, as I'm a fan of Kroese's web site musings and "The Force is Middling in this One", his book collection of said musings. I was conflicted on whether or not I liked the book throughout my reading, and have to conclude that it has some signs of a good book, with some annoyances that were also hard to ignore.

It is very clear that Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide was an inspiration here, as the HHG style jokes came fast and furious in the beginning (and moderately throughout the rest) of the book. I'm not sure if the density of these jokes was the original intent or pushing by the editors, but it does settle down somewhat when the story unfolds.

I didn't care for the apparent forced need for an Abbot and Costello exchange every few pages, either. At some point I've had enough "Who's on First" style conversations. There were also moments where I was pretty sure I was reading a lightly altered book version of Kevin Smith's "Dogma", with a couple of angels (one talented and one inept) plotting how to screw up or cause the destruction of Earth through some twisting of religious dogmatic law.

I'm not sure if Kroese is trying to make a religious point (there are some pontifications near the end of the book that seem to be either preachy or confusing), or if Armageddon is just a whimsical setting for the plot. The deep pseudo-Biblical intricacies of interactions between Seraphim, Angels and humans detract from the fantasy nature of the story, though (unless there truly is a deeper religious point being made, in which case I had trouble wrapping up what that was).

Negative points aside, I do think that Kroese has a keen sense of humor, and I can see his appreciation for Adams, and maybe some Vonnegut, in his writing. I think a lot of the jokes are a bit forced, but I think if he settles into his own style (which he does at various parts in the book), the story can be interesting and engaging.

If you're a fan of Douglas Adams, you may enjoy this book at least as a tribute to his style and humor.

I'd read another Kroese book, but would encourage him to either build and describe a unique world and setting, such as Adams or Terry Pratchett, or if the plan is to stick with modern day Earth and connections to real people/things, refine the political or religious points if that is the intent. Also don't let the editors pressure you into a wordplay joke per word count quota.

All in all, not a bad effort from an obviously smart author, and I look forward to seeing what Kroese comes up with next.
2911979
Most of the objections seem to arise from criticism of particular sections, while disregard others that plainly address their issue. Considering the brevity, I'm not sure how this could occur, but if one does choose to read 'Freewill' and reflect on such, they should find themselves at a fairly comedic conclusion.
3822853
I'm not sure if I enjoyed this book or not. I think I'm sitting on somewhere in between. I found it interesting. It is certainly concept that captures your attention, but I did struggle with some aspects. Firstly the writing style. I found this book to be a fairly slow read. There were sections of this book that felt long. During excessive and sometimes repetitive recountings I would find myself thinking, I know this already, we've covered this before. Also, there is a whole lot of introspection in this book. Not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes I found there was just too much and it slowed the book down. The ending seemed abrupt in comparison to the rest of the book - a quick resolution, of sorts, that didn't fit with the rest of the book. Although, I'm not sure how else it could have been handled, and it does work.

And now to the plot itself. This storyline seems to have captured people's attention - how will the topic of immaculate conception be handled? What angle with the author take? Well, this is not a retelling of the story of Mary, mother of Jesus. This book does not set out to prove the existence of God. The main character struggles with these questions herself and seems to settle on almost the opposite conclusion. Instead this book is about the reactions of Mina herself and the reactions of her friends, family and that of the wider community. It's about choosing to believe in something, anything, even if you yourself are unsure about what that is. And ultimately, I hope that people find it's about not casting judgement - not judging people for having faith and not harming others if they have a faith that differs from your own. Maybe that's not what the author set out to achieve, but that's what I took from it.

Is this book sacrilegious? I can't answer that. I think it's important to remember that this book is filed under fiction. It's a story, just like any tale about dragons, time travel, or a boy and a girl falling in love. It asks the question What if?

The publishers provided a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
752337
I liked the book, although it had some flaws. Spoiler Alert: Some elements of the story are revealed if you read on.
The premise was interesting and different, but I often found it felt "wrong" somehow. I'm not sure I can put it into words. You had to have a little more suspension of disbelief (SOD) than I usually like in a fantasy novel, and yet how could she have improved the background of the world and it's problem, I'm not sure..... I still feel it was not done as well as it could have been.
I am a sci/fi fantasy lover and there is always a lot of SOD, but once the world base and the  universe's rules are set you expect them to stay that way... Like: What causes the only existing rain to fall only on the ponds the people made, or lakes and ocean. I kept hoping that would be explained and it wasn't. While we were told that they "stir" the waters in the upper world to somehow keep a little bit of necessary "something" happening below.. it certainly didn't explain the occasional patchy rain. Oh, and were there clouds that the rain fell from, as none are seen anymore?? Did the rain just appear in the sky? Just some inconsistencies. - Edit = The author HAD posted a comment on it that was going to explain some of the issues I had, but she deleted it. Her explanation of the rain on the ponds was that "What if it happened? In a world with no wind, only heat, bodies of water evaporate and liquify (sic) in the sky directly over these water sources." Okay, I will give her that one I guess, although while the water vapor rises in the heat, it would eventually reach the upper atmosphere and change to cloud forms? AND the act of the rising of the water vapor would CREATE a kind of wind.....
There were occasional inconsistencies and wtf / huh moments that were never explained, or where the events didn't make sense, falling off a steep cliff, but landing with very little damage to them both (one had a head wound, when they should have had crushed skulls and bones), which means they must have been close to the ground, but no one seemed to know that.  And while I can understand attraction to be a little bit distracting, I often felt the thoughts of the two main characters were a little bit ... more like those a 14 year old would have, not a 25 year old and an immortal. Climbing down that steep cliff on steep steps, facing the cliff face, the one character is looking down at the love interest that is ahead of her, and there is no mention of seeing how high up they are, just how she can see into woman cleavage... and gets so distracted she slips...and both apparently plummet down, but it just says she falls on the love interest... HUH?
There aren't a lot of typos, exactly, but there are awkward sentences and quite a few incorrectly used words. I'm not sure why, but it felt like the author isn't as proficient in english as she should be or someone should have done a better job at editing. I am going to try to get a list, of the ones that bothered me the most, to the author.

Oh and the one tiny bit of sex, either might have been done a little more in-depth, or should have been left out with a "fade to black" moment, instead of trying to do some details, but skipping almost all of the details. No passion really, didn't feel real. I didn't feel the heart pulling pain you feel when you can identify with the characters passion and wanting the other person. It lacked that fire. Oh and it didn't help that there was one of those.. hey what happened moments! as they go from standing to suddenly lying on the ground facing each other and as passionless as a doctors exam, begin to have sex, when it really could have been two lovers discovering each other for the first time...

Dang this review sounds all negative and it isn't really meant that way.

Was it all worth it? Yeah I think so. A good read, just a little dissatisfying at times, a little juvenile and simplistic. But still an interesting premise and likeable characters.
3060555
I am reading this novel aloud to my wife, we will probably finish it despite my occasional screams of irritation and disbelief. Some specific thoughts:
1) For someone who wants to seem deep at home in the Pacific Northwest, Doyle writes that a male elk is a buck instead of a bull, and a female elk is a doe instead of a cow. He lost 75% of his credibility on that blunder...understandable though since he is after all from the East.
2) Along those same lines, I am convinced for a variety of reasons that Doyle's Moses the Crow character is more likely a raven than a crow...the picture on the books cover is that of a raven. Since some of Mink River's characters are Pacific Northwest Natives whose tribes venerate ravens instead of crows I figure that Doyle got the right idea but the wrong species...he is after all from the East.
3) I like Magical Realism as it comes from the pens of South American novelists. But when all of Doyle's magic is invested in a talking, misnomered bird, it seems overly contrived.
4) Regarding style 'A' (my creds--I made a good living as a writer for 15 years, the editor of two national magazines, taught writing, tutored writing, worked as a manuscript physician and was a consultant to an author's agent): If Doyle eliminated two-thirds of his "and"s in his run-on sentences he would not have a novel but a longish short story. The device was used, I believe, first by Hemingway, it was interesting them, imitative and amateurish ever since. I edit as I read. If a decent editor would have taken out his gratuitous repetitions then it would have been just a standard short story
5) Regarding style 'B': A number of years ago postmodern authors liked to copy long lists of this and that into their narratives. Once it was fashionable and marginally interesting, in 2010 when this book was published it is just a bore.
6) Regarding style 'C': For those reading Mink River aloud to their lovers, Doyles off-again/on-again use of punctuation is a problem because we have to keep half an eye scanning ahead as we read to get the inflections right when we get there.
7) Regarding style 'D': A creative postmodern novelist will strike upon something unique in style not just imitative as Doyle's tricks seem.
8) Regarding style 'E': Doyle's occasional lapses into Gaelic are a hindrance to us aloud readers and add nothing to the narrative except the suspicion that the author just wants to strut.
9) The characters in Mink River are interesting and a couple are compelling and a couple are only marginally believable, but they are contrived like puppets only from the author's mind and do not arise organically from the narrative. That is a bit amateurish.
10) It is too bad that we have too much time invested in this book and I hope that continuing to what I understand is a suitable climax will make it all worth it. If it had not been for the aloud thing I would have cut my losses and ditched this puppy when Doyle called a bull elk a buck.
2820900
The first half might be summarized:
1.  Things are really good and getting better all the time.
2.  Some (much fewer) things aren't so good, and some (even fewer) things are getting worse.
3.  Anyway, the good things aren't making us happy.

Along the way, he proffers numerous possibilities for why people aren't happy but none of them are analyzed at length.  I didn't feel any more enlightened than after reading the earlier&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Good-Life-and-Its-Discontents-The-American-Dream-in-the-Age-of-Entitlement/dp/0679781528/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement</a>&nbsp;].  In fact, I found more satisfying the few pages in&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/How-the-Mind-Works/dp/0393334775/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">How the Mind Works</a>&nbsp;(pp. 389-393 The Happiness Treadmill, and pp. 506-9 on friendship ).

Then, for a few chapters, he presents evidence that people who forgive, have gratitude, and are spiritual are happier.  So if we want to be happier, we should cultivate forgiveness, gratitude, and spirituality.  Instead, he says, people are constantly looking for someone to blame or to be annoyed with.  This is not just socially accepted but socially rewarded.  And intellectuals tell us everything is purposeless atoms in an uncaring universe.

The last 80 pages are an argument for what the early 20th century would have called social gospel: universal health insurance, a high minimum wage, lots of foreign aid; government should regulate executive compensation.  Whether you agree with these or not, they don't have much to do with the subtitle of the book.

To be fair, Easterbrook pretty much says, They would make me happy, and they SHOULD make you happy, too.  However, that points to another problem with the book.  Though marketed as a work of social science, it is full of preaching.  Much of the book is not about why people feel worse or better but about how the author thinks we should live.

In the last few pages, he seems to say, Once we are not poor, nothing we do will make us happier, so we should just be good people and do good things.  Now that would be an interesting thesis to organize a book around.
1250156
The author's views are compelling, but I don't see how he can be wholely correct.... I mean, why are we "stuck" in our own creation? If this is an illusion that just isn't working for us, then why the heck are we not collectively re-creating it? I agree with some other reviewers that this book can be a painful perception of life, especially when there are no answers at hand to fix this "reality". Depression, feeling distanced and isolated from others who don't "get it", a feeling of powerlessness to effect changes... not exactly constructive feelings. If infinite love is what the author is trying to promote, he hasn't done a very good job. I believe we can change the world to make love the prominant force, but we must feel united and powerful together, rather than lost in an illusion.
1004273
Dr. Brown had some excellent points designed for shaking people out of moral stupor.  However, some of what he suggested was a little impractical and some of the generalizations he made were a little too sweeping.  For example, he bemoaned that there were not more students going to small Bible schools to study to become missionaries.  There is much to be said in favor of doing so, but I feel that those of us at secular schools are having just as profound an impact--we are trying to be lights in the darkness.  I might not be like Dr. Brown; I might not have any world-shaking impact on the nation as a whole.  However, in my own sphere of influence, I am making a difference.

In addition to this, some of his theology strikes a negative chord with me.  For example, he mentioned that Jesus really expects us to hate our families.  But, the balance of scripture proclaims that anyone who hates his brother cannot claim to love the Lord.  Jesus' words were hyperbole, not direct commandments on living.  Also, Dr. Brown mentioned that "only the holy get in" as regarding Heaven.  Yes, only the holy get in--but--it is not our efforts to make ourselves holy, as he failed to mention, it is God's grace to all of us.  Though he claims not to be a legalist, the book came across rather harshly and had quite a legalistic tone on it.  America does need to shape up morally, but we as Christians can't force a revival into appearance.  That will happen only when God wills it.