Category: Thoughts & Analysis

Top 5 Books of 2019

2019 was a big year of reading for me. I read 45 books! While I wrote a little blurb about every single one, I thought that it might be a little bulky to post all of them, so I decided to post a Top 5 (with a few honorable mentions.) Going forward, I’ll attempt to post them monthly so that it doesn’t get so unwieldy. Anyway, here are my Top 5 Books of 2019.

Dream Land: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

This book is an eye-opening look into the growing Opiate Epidemic of the last 30 years.  It splits its focus between the American medical establishment and the Mexican drug cartels.  It shows the way that unethical marketing and medical practices lead to the overprescribing of opiates to many areas of the US, and how this built an enormous market for heroin traffickers from Mexico.  It also documents the ingenuity of these heroin traffickers, building their business to be efficient and avoid the heat of the DEA.

If anything, this book doesn’t go far enough in condemning the pharmaceutical industry and medical establishment for causing the opiate epidemic.  It does point strongly to them being the problem but doesn’t mount much of an ethical critique of the systems that allowed this to occur and allowed the pharmaceutical billionaires to make off like bandits while countless Mexicans went to jail for taking advantage of the market that was created.  I appreciate that this was probably a conscious journalistic choice, but it saddens me that many people will read this and not look deeper into the systemic issues this exposes.

Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

This book probably wins my best fiction (that I read this year) award.  Delightfully funny and witty, with an amusing philosophical bent.  Tells the story of an unlikely love affair between a princess and an outlaw with principles.  Not sure what more to say; I highly recommend it.

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

I was turned onto this by a brief mention of it by Slavoj Zizek in one of his talks.  This is, nominally, a defense of Christian Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, but in reality, it’s a very liberal version of orthodoxy which he defends.  You see, he isn’t so much defending the orthodox church structures or ideas, as the orthodox philosophies.  He makes the case, fairly compellingly, that Christian theology is quite different in nature from the theology of most other world religions.  And, in making the comparison, he comes to the conclusion that he prefers the world created by a Christian theology, that he finds in it the most truth.

I can’t say that he’s converted me into a good God-fearing Christian with this book, but he has convinced me that I find certain aspects of Christian theology appealing and compelling.  A quote from this book has even become one of my mantras.

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

I really liked this one!  The essential idea is that embedded in language is the ability to change the world (he calls them spells).  As we grow up, people are constantly using this magic on us to tell us about ourselves and the world.  We are constantly accepting things people say and making agreements with ourselves about the way the world is.  Ruiz wants us to examine all of these agreements and realize that many of them may be making our lives into hell.  He proposes four agreements we can make with ourselves to start rewriting our perception of ourselves and reality.

  1. Be impeccable with your word
  2. Take nothing personally
  3. Don’t make assumptions
  4. Always do your best

I read this at the same time I was listening to a series of podcasts on Structuralism in philosophy, and together they rang really true.  Our whole reality is structured by language.  Only by understanding the way it creates our world, can we begin to change our world for the better.

Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday

This book will make you look at the world differently.  You will become skeptical of the worldview the news presents to you and you will begin to see advertising in everything.  It documents the way marketers exploit the modern blog-driven media and draws many parallels to the age of the yellow press.  I highly recommend this one.

Honorable Mentions:

Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra

King Warrior Magician Lover by Douglas Gillette and Robert L. Moore

Why is this blog called In Search of Magic?

I created this blog just before I left on a 6-month travel sabbatical two years ago.  At that point in my life, I was suffering from chronic back pain and depression.  I felt trapped in my life, cursed with low energy, and I wanted to find a way out of that feeling.  Therapy and medication had been helping with these things, but I felt something was missing on a deeper level: magic, mojo, meaning.

As a child on long hikes, I would daydream about being an adventurer, a wizard or knight, travelling along dangerous, wild paths throwing fireballs at the various monsters that might approach.  I imagined quests that truly mattered to the fate of the world, and amazing powers that could be at my disposal.

Perhaps, in reapproaching the world with this sense of wonder, I could find some meaning for my existence.  So, I decided I would open myself to the spiritual and magical.  In fact, I would write about my travel experiences, but would add fictional, magical, romantic components to them.  I would be lead by spirits through temples in Nepal.  I would be seduced by Vampires in Berlin.  I would find ancient tomes hidden away in Prague, and discover the energizing magic of the communal spirit of flamenco in Spain.  In the Vienna opera house, for one night I would fall in love with a fellow traveler, only to never see her again .

Unfortunately, the curse ran deep, and I spent much of my time travelling simply wandering.  I could not bring myself to write consistently nor to connect to local communities or other travelers.  I did, however, make some progress on my inward search for magic.  I read multiple books about Buddhism, spirituality, and Zen.  Something shifted within me and my depression was debilitating no longer.  The curse wasn’t lifted, but part of the evil in it had been blocked.  It no longer ran so deep in my body, my back pain was much relieved, and I could see my life more positively.

I do not believe that magic is dead or rendered obsolete by science.  Magic is simply another lens through which we can understand this chaotic world.  I personally believe that magical thinking is sorely lacking in our institutionalized world.  The power structures in our modern world would have you believe in your insignificance, in the inevitability of your situation.  Alistair Crowley defined Magick as “the science and art of causing change to occur in comformity with the will.”  With magic, nothing is impossible.  With magic, we can change ourselves and the world against any odds.

Liberals, Democrats, Progressives: Is there Anybody Left?

The indoctrination is complete.  Our collective imaginations and memories have been wiped.  Not surprising since collectivity has been wiped, too.  True individuality has been replaced with a simulation of individuality.  If you don’t look too closely, you can’t see the pixels.

Liberals and conservatives — two sides of the same free market transaction.  No one carries  change anymore.  Liberals are all we have left, conservatives are always right or never right.  What happened?  All these books talk about things that used to exist: socialism, communism, labor, worker’s parties, antiauthoritarians, anarchists, social democrats, progressive labor.  Now the books talk about the left .  What’s left?

Why do we have an 8-hour work day, 5-day work week, overtime pay, workers comp, child labor laws?  Wealth inequality is at an all-time high. Can you even imagine a 3-day work week? It would kill the small businesses.  Tell me the last riches-to-rags story you heard.  Who’s Saint Monday?

Liberals fight for freedom and equality. Everyone has an equal right to be depressed.  Everyone has an equal right to eat at McDonalds and drink Coke.  Everyone has an equal right to kill the pain with opiates, for now at least. 

Certain possibilities didn’t survive the compression algorithm. With a whimper, I guess.  Does anyone remember when solidarity died?  Is there anybody left?