I am currently going through “Emerson: The mind on fire” and I don’t like it. Still, I’m at around 65% of the book which is beyond a point where I could’ve abandoned it. Sunk cost fallacy is apparently not something I take into account when reading books. No, I shall proceed now till the end, because I’ve passed the 15% point where I said the popular Kindle highlights goodbye and proceeded in my solitary trail of people who don’t abandon started books. The accidental tap at the bottom left part of the screen revealed a terrifying ”6 hours 45 minutes” left in the book. I pray that 2 of those hours are footnotes because otherwise I shall perish, to put it in 19th century New England lingo.
I think I’m spoiled by Stefan Zweig’s incredible skill at writing biographies. See, I’m interested in Emerson, but couldn’t care less about his thoughts on revolution in Paris in 1848 or that he liked the temprorary burgoise government that was overthrown later. Couldn’t care less about his correspondence with this or that person and that they “poisoned the well” and then “parted ways”. It tells me almost nothing about the man. Why is every other biography filled with such minute unnecessary details of their lives, so I have to search for the 1% that is actually interesting. And yeah, I guess Walter Isaacson is better than this, he doesn’t keep it as low as 1%, but he still doesn’t reach Zweig’s level.
When I read Zweig, the people come alive. The essence of the person gets described. I’m sure he‘s also spent countless hours studying the subject, but he doesn’t bore you with all the details he had to go through. He knows what’s important and what’s a digerssion. He considers your time spent reading his biographies precious. And he wrestles with the subject in a very honest way that makes reading incredibly interesting. He doesn’t just lay down facts, but he raises questions that these subjects bring in his own mind. Sure, his biographies are not objective, but if I was in for objective reading I would open an encyclopedia, not a biography. So this is my review. Quit this book early, so you don’t pass the point when you’re going to feel regret for all the hours you’ve put into it, like I did. Now I have to grind through these 6 remaining hours and my only consolation is going to be the “read” tag next to it in my Kindle library.
P.S. I’m leaving all the grammar errors in all their glory, so you know this is not written by AI. You might have your suspicions because I deliberately left the condemning “—“ in the last blog post.
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