4 ms·

What rocks teach us about the human condition

30 points by Thevet 4y ago

L_Rahman 4y ago
Not the type of book whose review I would expect to see here. The reviewer was evocative enough for me to pick up a used copy on Amazon. Thanks for sharing.
- metadat 4y ago
  I was like "How are there already used copies?", and found it was first published in 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Raffles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Raffles Hugh Raffles looks like an interesting fellow.
  - oh_sigh 4y ago
    Reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell without all his hucksterism
  - Wohlf 4y ago
    There's often used copies on Amazon fairly quickly from returns.
westcort 4y ago
My key takeaways: * This extraordinary book will win devotees among that minority who don’t see “stories” everywhere, who resent the hegemony of narrative, and who perhaps experience time more like a spiral or, as Roberto Bolaño puts it in the epigraph, “not a river but an earthquake happening nearby” * The book is an invented composite itself – part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part psychogeography * Raffles travelled to Theresienstadt and immersed himself there but eventually felt he’d “lost his appetite to add to the literature of terror”, as it re-awakens all around us * In Hugh Raffles' profound, genre-straddling new book, stones and minerals reveal the pain of loss and the secrets of time * When it eventually ends, it leaves you not breathless but wonderstruck * The author travels from New York to Scotland, Svalbard to Greenland, but the first person features rarely; it glints, like the mica he considers in the epilogue * Like Trinitite, formed at the New Mexico atomic test site in 1945, and plastiglomerates, first recorded in Hawaii in 2013, blubberstone is “a geological artifact of world history” * Lifeways that have developed over millennia for peoples or animals can be snapped The book is called "The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time" and you can find it on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48986277-the-book-of-unconformities https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48986277-the-book-of-unc...
- qiskit 4y ago
  So it's not ovid's deucalion and pyrrha but kinda like it.
0898 4y ago
I’ve never quite grasped, what does the term “condition” mean in this context?
- balsam 4y ago
  It is PR-speak for the enlightenment conferred by a liberal education. Often seen in Ivy League brochures. In this case the author is comparing the book to a freshman experience.

30 points by Thevet 4y ago

Not the type of book whose review I would expect to see here. The reviewer was evocative enough for me to pick up a used copy on Amazon. Thanks for sharing.

metadat 4y ago
I was like "How are there already used copies?", and found it was first published in 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Raffles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Raffles Hugh Raffles looks like an interesting fellow.
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  Reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell without all his hucksterism
- Wohlf 4y ago
  There's often used copies on Amazon fairly quickly from returns.

westcort 4y ago

My key takeaways: * This extraordinary book will win devotees among that minority who don’t see “stories” everywhere, who resent the hegemony of narrative, and who perhaps experience time more like a spiral or, as Roberto Bolaño puts it in the epigraph, “not a river but an earthquake happening nearby” * The book is an invented composite itself – part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part psychogeography * Raffles travelled to Theresienstadt and immersed himself there but eventually felt he’d “lost his appetite to add to the literature of terror”, as it re-awakens all around us * In Hugh Raffles' profound, genre-straddling new book, stones and minerals reveal the pain of loss and the secrets of time * When it eventually ends, it leaves you not breathless but wonderstruck * The author travels from New York to Scotland, Svalbard to Greenland, but the first person features rarely; it glints, like the mica he considers in the epilogue * Like Trinitite, formed at the New Mexico atomic test site in 1945, and plastiglomerates, first recorded in Hawaii in 2013, blubberstone is “a geological artifact of world history” * Lifeways that have developed over millennia for peoples or animals can be snapped The book is called "The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time" and you can find it on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48986277-the-book-of-unconformities https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48986277-the-book-of-unc...

qiskit 4y ago
So it's not ovid's deucalion and pyrrha but kinda like it.

0898 4y ago

I’ve never quite grasped, what does the term “condition” mean in this context?

balsam 4y ago
It is PR-speak for the enlightenment conferred by a liberal education. Often seen in Ivy League brochures. In this case the author is comparing the book to a freshman experience.