Bitcoin for Beginners & Dummies: Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Book - Giovanni Rigters

 This book was not as detailed as the first I read in terms of history, but it did have a list of some of the most popular cryptocurrencies and exchanges detailing their pros and cons.  This book was important for that part.  It gave a run-down of the various coins, what they were tied to and how they came about so you could judge if it sounded like a quality investment or not.  It detailed the exchanges and how safe they are as well as what you can trade on them.  It also discussed the various ways to store your crypto and how to get or recieve them.  This was a good book for a basic overview of actually using them, instead of largely theory like the first book I mentioned.  

Gender Trouble - Judith Butler

 This book was difficult to slog through because it's basically reading a sociology dissertation.  There were, however, several important and insightful arguments in it, but I would have preferred a cliff notes version.  I'll save you some trouble (gender or not, ha!) and detail what I thought the most important take-home bits were below.

This entire book boils down to the idea that femininity is defined as the opposite of masculinity, therefore anything that negates or works outside of the non-masculine rule breaks the narrative and people's brains implode.  This sounds both too simplistic and at first appears difficult to place or understand due to lack of examples, but I'll offer a few from the book that, to me, really cemented the concept.  

- Lesbians! What use does a lesbian have for a man? Nothing as far as personal life enrichment is concerned. (Sure, one would hope that no one ignore nearly half the population based on their sex, but men have been doing this for centuries, so it's not like it's unheard of.)  So what are the two tropes about lesbians recycled ad nauseam?  1) The two hot femme lesbians who are just showing off for (male) attention.  2) The angry butch lesbo who is there to take down the patriarchy, violently if needed.  In both these stereotypes the woman is only relevant in her stance to either pleasure or harm men.  There is no sexy lesbian for the bi girls trop.  No butch leading hetro women in a feminist movement.  There is never any reference to the quiet relationship between two women outside of how it impacts men.  Occasionally, you'll hear about some bible-thumper housewife up in arms that her little girl's teacher is a lesbian and she may teach the child to be a lesbian! Then the child will never grow up to marry a man and make babies and follow the #lifescript! I believe we have all heard this story at least once.  But how many times have you heard of that bible-thumping housewife freaking out that her little girls teacher is 55 and still not married? I haven't.  Because at 55 the teacher is no longer a sex object and doesn't matter to men, however she could still get married to a male and that makes her just the right combination.

- The dreaded childfree!  Why do women who chose to be childfree get so much more pushback, from literally everyone, than men who chose the same route in life?  The internet is absolutely choking with stories of males walking in and getting a vasectomy nearly immediately (a few exceptions do exist) but females have years long battles spanning multiple doctors and even multiple unwanted/unplanned pregnancies before maybe, finally, getting the snip themselves.  The excuse given by these "doctors" to the women invariably falls into the "but what if you change your mind" category, often wandering into "what if a man forces you to change your mind" territory.  Parents, friends, co-workers, a random guy on the street, even the rare spouse, all cannot comprehend that a female wouldn't want to go through the most grueling and dangerous natural procedure of humanity, child birth.  Excluding the spouse and possibly the parents of only children, someone choosing not to have a child has 0 influence on any of these people's lives.  Yet they have to comment, must persuade this woman that she is wrong.  Men can get some of this from their mothers/MILs, but not from friends or co-workers and certainly not strangers on the street.  Why is everyone so vested in the woman having children then?  Because the one thing males cannot do is give birth.  Pushing out a child is the only thing a female can do that a male cannot.  Making that process the most important thing a woman can do.  So when she chooses not to, what standard has society left to hold her to?  Simply put: if she's not reproducing (or raising someone's children), she is not dichotomizing herself as everything that isn't male/masculine. Leaving her as ... what? in the eyes of society and social constructs. If she isn't the opposite of a male, what is she?

This is an insightful book, but it could be pared down to a long magazine article and still get as much out of it. 

The Nazi Occult War: Hitler's Compact with the Forces of Evil Book - Michael Fitzgerald

 I was rather disappointed about this book.  I expected a more detailed and sordid tale than the bland overview this book offers.  When you speak of a psycho like Hitler and his heavy dabbling in the occult, I was expecting some diary entries about his crazy rants from those close to him or even fanciful rumors, albeit with a large disclaimer about lack of verifiable authenticity attached.  It was super boring.  How does one make Hitler boring? This book was mostly "X went here looking for Atlantis but Y author thought it was over here and sent X there when his first expedition failed to locate it."  No details about why they thought it was there or who they contacted.  No journal entries or stories from relatives.  Just boring.  

However, there was one great aspect of this book.  The author details the finer points of how Hitler got involved in all that crap and how it obviously shaped his views and plans.  Who he met and the ideas he absorbed from these people were paramount to the stances he too.  He took ideas of hidden evil and horoscopes and the German superiority complex from these people he met prior to his political career.  I had always wondered how this messed up little man had cultivated such grand ideas about himself and the German peoples, this was it.  All the secret societies and left overs from the occult obsession of the late 1800's solidified into a political platform in Nazi Germany, which ironically, lead to their destruction too.  So overall, read the first third of this book and forget about the rest.. 

Crippled by Cryptocurrency - Atherton Cooper

 This was a clickbait-y title with the content of the book being a combination of ghost stories about crypto and sound financial security advice about any get-rich-quick scheme not specific to crypto.  The author goes on talking points about how if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Only invest what you can afford to loose.  Always double check where you are sending your money.  Research thoroughly before investing in anything.  He mentions Ponzi schemes multiple times, which have obviously been around for far longer than crypto.  The only difference now is that the form of payment used has changed.

While all of this advice is legitimate, the author grabbed the crypto part of this as a way to sell more books, just hopping on the band wagon, and nothing to do with crypto specific problems, but general internet safety.

Heidi - Johanna Spyri

 My grandmother gave me an illustrated abridged version of the book as a child and I never read it.  This Christmas my mother gave that book to my niece.  I realized I never actually read Heidi, so I thought I should finally get around to it.  It's a sweet story with excellent morals and a great young children's book, wholesome and straight-forward.  I would definitely read this to a young child.  

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain

 It's been years since I read Twain (Huckleberry Finn) but I find him a delightful author.  This book struck a particularly fun chord for me because I often think about this topic:  If I got thrown back in time with no resources but my memory, could I reinvent the industrial revolution?  The MC totally does, or would have if he hadn't pissed off literally everyone.  I identified SO HARD with this book.  The MC running around going, "Well, that makes little to no sense!" or the following exchange.

MC: "Ya'll need a bath."

Peasants: "The last time we bathed the water dried up so God must want us dirty."

MC: "lol, no-kay.  Where's the well?" *looks at it* "Yep, God just said you were dumbasses, that's all." *fixes well*

Peasants: "Wow MC! You're a wizard."

MC: "Yeaaaaaa...."

This was a great, snarky book and I loved it.  Perhaps my only negative is the random dying of MC for no reason a-la nineteenth century at the end.  But, eh, the actual story was told nicely.  

Aquaponics: Aquaponic Gardening - Tom Sutherland

 A great starter book for the topic.  I want to read a more in-depth book to get the details of a small system hammered out, but I was able to think up a design even with this short book.  It is a great general overview book if you're just considering the idea or know nothing. I've been keeping fish and aquatic plants for decades at this point, yet I still liked the list of items and the information wasn't repetitive or obvious.  This is a great little book to get you started on your way.