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Two Reviews of Trouble
Apr. 25th, 2012 03:55 pmHi,
So I got through a couple of interesting books:
First up Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery. He wrote a book called Liberation that I really enjoyed and he returns to similar themes here.
The book takes place in an America shattered by global warming, disaster climate and a war for the scraps left behind. Sunny Jim and Reverend Bauxite used to be part of the resistance. Now they're fleeing the war up the Susquehanna River to find Jim's son Aaron and take off before the war, or the apocalyptic storm simply called The Big One sweeps everything away. The book jumps around to several viewpoints -- Jim and the Reverend, the army people trying to catch them, Aaron, various people on the riverboat Jim travels on. The book slowly builds up a picture of Jim and his sister Merry and how their past defines their present.
It's all covered by a mysterious narrator who collects their stories and hopes to preserve them for some future generation if there is one. The book clipped along and it was a fun read. Certainly good for post-apocalypse readers out there.
The next book I picked up on the recommendation of Sam Harris from his book Free Will I looked at last week. The book is Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller. Mr. Miller has trained extensively as a martial artist and works as a corrections officer. So aside from working out in the dojo, he's actively been involved in any number of violent assaults. Although the book compares and contrasts martial arts and violent assaults, much of what he has to say is interesting and useful no matter where you stand.
His basic tenet is that no amount of sparring can prepare you for an actual assault and it may do more harm than good. In a real do-or-die situation, you've probably been jumped by surprise, you've already been hit, stabbed, shot and the best your training can offer is a slim chance at explosively reacting and giving you a chance to get away or turn the tables. Real self-defense is in avoidance or evasion and not kung-fu. He peels back a lot about what happens in the actual fights he's been in (often with people who regularly employ violence as a strategy) and tries to illuminate what leads up to violence, what happens during violence and what happens after violence. He's also quick to point out that violence is huge, how it happens to you will almost certainly be different than how it's happened to him, and that he shouldn't be taken as gospel. But it pays to listen to a guy who has to break up prison fights for a living. A very interesting book. Again, a fairly short piece (under 200 pages) and I skipped some of the "if you're a martial arts instructor/student, you should consider adding this to your training program", but lots of interesting stuff to think about.
later
Tom
So I got through a couple of interesting books:
First up Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery. He wrote a book called Liberation that I really enjoyed and he returns to similar themes here.
The book takes place in an America shattered by global warming, disaster climate and a war for the scraps left behind. Sunny Jim and Reverend Bauxite used to be part of the resistance. Now they're fleeing the war up the Susquehanna River to find Jim's son Aaron and take off before the war, or the apocalyptic storm simply called The Big One sweeps everything away. The book jumps around to several viewpoints -- Jim and the Reverend, the army people trying to catch them, Aaron, various people on the riverboat Jim travels on. The book slowly builds up a picture of Jim and his sister Merry and how their past defines their present.
It's all covered by a mysterious narrator who collects their stories and hopes to preserve them for some future generation if there is one. The book clipped along and it was a fun read. Certainly good for post-apocalypse readers out there.
The next book I picked up on the recommendation of Sam Harris from his book Free Will I looked at last week. The book is Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller. Mr. Miller has trained extensively as a martial artist and works as a corrections officer. So aside from working out in the dojo, he's actively been involved in any number of violent assaults. Although the book compares and contrasts martial arts and violent assaults, much of what he has to say is interesting and useful no matter where you stand.
His basic tenet is that no amount of sparring can prepare you for an actual assault and it may do more harm than good. In a real do-or-die situation, you've probably been jumped by surprise, you've already been hit, stabbed, shot and the best your training can offer is a slim chance at explosively reacting and giving you a chance to get away or turn the tables. Real self-defense is in avoidance or evasion and not kung-fu. He peels back a lot about what happens in the actual fights he's been in (often with people who regularly employ violence as a strategy) and tries to illuminate what leads up to violence, what happens during violence and what happens after violence. He's also quick to point out that violence is huge, how it happens to you will almost certainly be different than how it's happened to him, and that he shouldn't be taken as gospel. But it pays to listen to a guy who has to break up prison fights for a living. A very interesting book. Again, a fairly short piece (under 200 pages) and I skipped some of the "if you're a martial arts instructor/student, you should consider adding this to your training program", but lots of interesting stuff to think about.
later
Tom
