Yes, I have been on a book review kick. You may think I'm a mad man reading this much this quickly, but the truth is I have read most books beforehand and took notes, and then spring cleaning and house repairs took over, postponing the review up to this week, making it look like I was a book worm and a reviewing fiend. Funny thing is that I still have 3 more books to go and truthfully, until I get counter reviews, the book reviews will be limited to a tit for tat mutually beneficial relationship.
The latest book is "The Best of Roosh Volume 1."
Roosh's latest book is, obviously a "best of" series. And while that may seem cheap and easy, the truth is I am actually a big fan of when bloggers compile their "best of" series.
The reason is simple - it's their BEST OF and let me mathematically point out what I'm talking about.
Roosh's "best of" consists of the top 90 posts out of 1,742 posts. His writing is normally superb, but when you take the best 90 out of nearly 2,000 posts you are talking the top 5% of his posts. My "best of" book "Top Shelf" is 183 posts out of 4,200, again, roughly the top 5% of my posts.
Do you think this writing is going to be anything but pure, intellectual stimulation? A lot of people think "best of" series are an easy way for the author to make a quick buck because they merely repackage what they've already written. And while true, they completely dismiss the quality of writing the author is refining, repackaging and presenting to the audience. In short, this is a person's best writing. However it was presented or published is moot.
Additionally, think of the time savings.
When you purchase an author's "best of" you're not really purchasing the writing in that you may have already read most of the posts. You are purchasing time savings. Because, yes, you could personally go through the past 6 years of posts and pull the best ones, but that will take you over 50 hours and if you pro-rate that at the median wage of $18 per hour, that's $900 in your labor to do so.
The $14 price is certainly worth it. So just like "Top Shelf" or "3 Years of Hate" you may want to consider purchasing "The Best of Roosh" because it's going to save you way more in labor trying to sift through their corresponding blogs for the gems of information.
Logistics and efficiency aside, what content can you expect from "The Best of Roosh?"
First, it is a great insight and chronology (though not presented in chronological order) of watching Roosh go from observant and independent thinking mid 20 something to accomplished and seasoned-veteran 30 something. Specifically, his tiring of the game. Though it has been his core and soul he mentions multiple times across multiple posts that to be a successful player means you must approach courting and picking up women as a job.
I don't know about you, but I don't like jobs. And, not to brag or be condescending (as I have nowhere near the success he has), I do have 8 years on Roosh in terms of age and am a bit further down the mine shaft than he is. And it is nice to see that, even with great success, the best start to tire of the constant scheming, planning, strategizing, etc. Matter of fact you start to feel bad for Roosh because if you step back and look at the book, you start to realize just what a high percentage of his life is dedicated to chasing girls. Though, this is purely speculation on my part, but I predict you'll see Roosh starting to abandon women and pursue more philosophical, loftier, and self-rewarding pursuits in the future. An epiphany most men never realize until death.
Second, it is once again, just like 3 Years of Hate, a GREAT primer and intermediary book for any young, middle aged, or old man. The book is just pure wisdom. And not pontificating observations or theorizing, but field experience. Again, I've never been the player Roosh was, but his experiences not only confirm what I experienced, but his experiences and observations go beyond what I ever did. One would do themselves great service reading and taking in what Roosh is writing about.
Third, I like the typos. I'm taking a religious stance with this in that I believe men are sick and tired of the predominantly female-dominated publishing/correcting-ones-english-at-the-expense-of-ideas industry. I truly believe that with online publishing proper grammar will finally be ranked below "ideas and content" as it should have always been until academian charlatans came in insisting their knowledge of "dangling participles" was more important than pioneering lines of thought. The more and more typos I see, overshadowed by intelligence, innovation, creativity, and just plain cleverness, the better for the publishing industry and readers.
Fourth, though crass even beyond my tastes at time, this book would be 4 times more beneficial to women than its intended male audience. The irony of course would be for women to get over/look past the crassness and vulgarity that would deter most women and once again READ WHAT THE MAN IS SAYING. Of course this is day dreaming, but doesn't make it any less true. Women would benefit IMMENSELY reading this.
I leave with two quotes I found outstanding in the book to give you a taste:
Is she in a group of more than three people? I find that three is the magic number.
If she’s in a group with only one or two other girls, your approach not only has a high chance of success but a low proba-bility of getting cockblocked. In larger groups, the dynamic changes to where she tries to align herself with the group’s previously agreed-upon personality. She’s no longer herself, but a slimy leg of a big anti-social octopus. She will be colder (even though she may be single) and let her friends levy an immediate cockblock strike upon your person.
I’m not attempting to be funny:
I sincerely cannot feel the difference between the men and women of this country once you take away the clothing and hair. Men look and act like fags while women act like men of yesterday, all to make a lot of money in an office park that contains a Starbucks. If you draw a venn diagram of both genders the circles might as well completely overlap.
You can find "The Best of Roosh" in paperback and Kindle.
Regarding the grammar/typo thing... I can understand not being worked up over minor errors, as long as they don't actually reduce the comprehensibility of the writing. That's especially true in non-technical writing. But, you seriously think more typos and grammar errors in written works is a good thing? Come on, man, that's going way too far the other way.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't care less about dangling participles or missing capitalization here and there. Many conventions are idiotic, such as never using "I" in a paper, and should be ignored when appropriate. Slavishly adhering to writing conventions that we were all taught in high school often results in stilted or laborious writing that is painful to read.
But, many of the core grammar and punctuation rules of English really aren't understood particularly well by the common man, and violating those rules can make otherwise brilliant writing (in terms of the ideas expressed) incomprehensible to a reader who DOES understand the rules. I read a lot of first drafts and unproofed work, and I can tell you that few things jerk me to a halt like having to stop and decipher what the author actually means (because, for example, he misused or forgot punctuation and it's therefore unclear which clauses are related). In an extreme example, an imperfectly written thesis statement or topic sentence can change the tone of several paragraphs or a whole article/paper. A simple dropped semicolon can radically alter what the reader gets out of the piece of writing.
I find myself saying "words mean things" to people on a regular basis, to remind people that words have meanings independent of what the speaker or author thinks they mean (I run into this at work all the time. I am a geologist and for fuck's sake, scientific terms mean what they mean, and subtle misunderstandings can wreak havoc on our data quality). Well, punctuation and grammar work the same way. It's up to the author (with the assistance of the editor) to effectively communicate ideas via the written word, and that is accomplished with proper usage of the English language. The quality of writing in America is fairly atrocious as it is, and encouraging ignorance of basic rules as some sort of rebellion against the feminized editors (or whatever your issue with them is) is quite the bad idea.
Perhaps I don't understand exactly what you mean when you say you think typos and errors are good to see in writing. I can see the point about not wanting to waste time worrying over minor errors when that time could be better spent coming up with new ideas or refining them, but after all... that's what we pay editors for, so writers don't have to do all that nitpicky editing that most of them aren't good at anyway. The fact remains, however, that it is fundamentally up to the writer to present his ideas clearly, and deciding not to worry about grammar or typos runs very counter to that goal: editors are not psychic, and a befuddled reader can't even call up the author to ask for clarification the way an editor can. So, maybe you could clarify your position on this matter?
Cue some jackass who is going to nitpick my own grammar or any typos I made in this unproofed comment.
@sanbaw
ReplyDeleteI second this emotion.
Though, I, like others, see the merit in ignoring the odd punctuation and capitalization error from time to time, it unnerves me to no end when there's a lack of clarity -- particularly when it comes to defining terms and writing in a style that's practical and like technical writing (almost). Defining terms is critical to argumentation, something quite lost on "feeling" feminazis. We're not talking poetry here, or "creative writing."
I remember one of Roosh's fairly recent posts where he talked about how some of his readers were demanding more bulleted lists and and shorter, crisper prose. Made sense as most of the readers were looking for the quick takeaway. Net readers, most of whom are the younger crowd and who grew up with webpages and blog posts, were of course going to demand this at some point.
Also, on an unrelated note, there are some men out there who discovered more worthwhile pursuits at an early age and tried to indulge in those despite great difficulties. In today's age, it's more difficult because of wage slavery.
I love ya, Cap, but your thoughts on punctuation and grammar are ridiculous. Grammar clarifies ideas. Punctuation, comma usage, etc. exist for a reason. Grammatical and mechanical errors lead to miscommunication between author and reader.
ReplyDeleteGrammar is not some feminist conspiracy. In my experience, most academics are atrocious writers in part because they have poor grammar.
Typos are small details. Easily caught by MS-Word and corrected. If you can't take that two seconds of trouble to run a spellcheck, or five minutes of study to understand the difference between there/their/they're then it's quite likely the rest of your ideas are similarly disordered. It's like a man who doesn't shower - what is the rest of his life like? Are you going to want to go to his house and eat off his grill, with his plates and utensils?
ReplyDeleteNever once met a grammer nazi that had anything of substance to say, or a single original thought. That includes the women who commented prior to me here.
ReplyDeleteMy ideas, when executed, have created well over a hundred jobs and fed dozens of families, including my admin, who is paid to correct my grammer. Far heir from me to take the food out of the mouth of a single moms child.