Alex's Updates en-US Tue, 18 Feb 2025 22:01:10 -0800 60 Alex's Updates 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7326335905 Tue, 18 Feb 2025 22:01:10 -0800 <![CDATA[Alex added 'Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet-One Bite at a Time']]> /review/show/7326335905 Food Fix by Mark Hyman Alex gave 1 star to Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet-One Bite at a Time (Hardcover) by Mark Hyman
For context—I have a friend who has gone pretty far down the all natural diet pipeline, to a point where it feels to me like the Healthy Diet industry is taking advantage of his desire to feel better and willingness to pay multiple thousands of dollars out of pocket for a functional medicinalist to tell him how to do that. While my own eating style already follows decently close to a “whole� diet (~90% of what I eat is stuff I cooked from raw ingredients), I’ve had a hard time understanding how someone whose intellect I respect could end up where he is. Thus—attempting to find sources to help me understand a bit better, whether they convince me to think the same or not.

Unfortunately, this book was not that. I will qualify this by saying I made is 20% of the way through the audiobook before getting too annoyed to continue, so a) I haven’t finished and b) part of my annoyance may have been due to a poor audiobook adaptation (not reading citations), but I have my doubts. My biggest gripe is the severe lack of SOURCES. NOTHING* is properly cited (*some statistics are occasionally cited, but this is an oddity, and they are often not cited well enough to actually find the source). He claims grass raised beef is a net positive for CO2 levels? That’s something I would love to read the findings on, too bad there is not a lick of a trail to where he got that from. Same thing with healthy soil and CO2 capture—I was actually very interested in reading on this, whether soil is just a good storage bank for organic carbon or if soil life itself is contributing to active carbon capture. I love this sort of thing. Unfortunately, if I want to read that, I need to go hunt down the sources myself (…if they even exist�). The information is presented in the book as novel and not common knowledge, so why isn’t this cited?
Likewise, the same goes for chronic diseases. I feel like this book missed an initial chapter defining its constantly used term of chronic disease and going into detail how it relates to diet. It really was a bit of whiplash that this is just missing. It’s taken for granted that you already believe diet is underlying all never-defined chronic diseases and goes from there, while still presenting itself as a scientifically and medically backed source. I’m not here to contest this point, and likely the entire audience who found this book isn’t going to either, which is how the book tries to get away with this—but that’s poor writing. Skipping the part where you convince a not already sold audience of your book’s *main thesis* is a major problem, and was the start of a (later, I believe, justified) sense that this book is meant only for a certain group who already largely agrees. The lack of citations and pitiful attempt at citation when it is there does not end in the first chapter. The Mediterranean diet is the “world’s healthiest diet�? Poor diet is the cause of ADHD in school children? “Some experts say China cannot built enough hospitals to keep up� WHO?! WHO SAID THAT? WHO ARE THE EXPERTS? WHEN DID THEY SAY THIS? This is the level of poor citation that high schoolers correctly lose points for on the essay they forgot to write until the night before, not something that an adult with a post secondary degree should be publishing!!!
The straw that broke my good will towards this book was Janice. An older lady whose diabetes and heart disease had her on a smorgasbord of pills and at the cusp of a *heart transplant* joined the author’s functional medicine group (which you can find and visit us at one of these two locations!) and magically fixed her blood sugar levels enough to get off of insulin in THREE DAYS!! This is something I, the author, see every day at the two clinics I am in charge of and benefit directly from their financial success. Followed directly about how these health crises can be solved by having insurance companies and/or the government cover patient to come see my currently out-of-pocket only business! Was this medical miracle published anywhere outside of this book? Why hasn’t every endocrinologist across the country just told their patients to stop eating fried foods and coke already??? This was the point where my opinion went from “poorly written but well intentioned book trying to convince people to eat better in ways that aids our health and planet� to “poorly written and aiming to bring in customers looking for any kind of help and who already suspect it might be related to their diet�. I had a hard time taking anything seriously after this, continued for about 30 more minutes before jumping ahead to see if the allergy to proper citations got better (it didn’t) and giving up. DNF, no plans to. ]]> Review7305996162 Sun, 09 Feb 2025 12:14:39 -0800 <![CDATA[Alex added 'Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence']]> /review/show/7305996162 Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke Alex gave 3 stars to Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (ebook) by Anna Lembke
Somewhere between 3 and 4. Picked this one up in the same vein as Stolen Focus and You’re Not Listening. I think I expected the book to be more about the Dopamine Economy she puts forward early on, an in depth look on how modern society is built and relies on our addiction to easy pleasures, but the book more focused more on people living with addictions (largely substantive—alcohol, drugs, food—but also a sex addiction) and what we learn from them. She will drop in hints about how these parallel modern phone and media addictions etc., but it’s hard to mesh most of her advice on fighting addictions with the realities of this world. For example, her final recommended steps 2 and 3 require abstinence from the source—I wish I could throw my phone away, but with an environment that increasingly assumes you will have and use your phone for everything, it’s not really possible. At first I was a bit annoyed by the seeming oversight of this, but I think the cold reality is that we are collectively setting ourselves up to fail and keep failing.

I think she also has some weird takes on pain. She spends a lot of time talking about how pain is a good treatment for addictions to easy pleasure. She does qualify it at the end by saying pain itself can become an addition, but when self harm is put forth as a treatment for psychological non well being, and an instance of cutting is only briefly mentioned as something she once successfully treated as an addiction, I feel like there is a huge (purposeful or not) oversight/oversimplification going on.

Edit: rereading the synopsis, which I can only hope wasn’t actually written by the author, it’s clear someone thought this book WAS addressing modern addictions. I don’t think the book succeeded on that very well. ]]> UserChallenge62009504 Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:20:41 -0800 <![CDATA[ Alex has created a challenge to read 24 books in 2025. ]]> /user/show/174391405-alex-hinkle 11627
Alex Hinkle has read 5 books toward their goal of 24 books.
 
5 of 24 (21%)
Create your own 2025 Reading Challenge » ]]> Review7238616878 Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:19:01 -0800 <![CDATA[Alex added 'Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto']]> /review/show/7238616878 Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey Alex gave 2 stars to Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto (Hardcover) by Tricia Hersey
Did not finish before Libby loan period ended, and I doubt I will re check it out. While the points she states are things I would agree with, the book does more to merely state (and restate and restate and restate and-) its main argument instead of backing up the argument. Maybe in the second half it did, but I was too put off by the first half to continue. ]]> Review7245101912 Wed, 22 Jan 2025 10:31:26 -0800 <![CDATA[Alex added '86—EIGHTY-SIX, Vol. 4: Under Pressure']]> /review/show/7245101912 86—EIGHTY-SIX, Vol. 4 by Asato Asato Alex gave 4 stars to 86—EIGHTY-SIX, Vol. 4: Under Pressure (Kindle Edition) by Asato Asato
Read this in two-ish sittings on a long plane flight. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the intro portions focusing on Lena and Shin’s relationship devolving into a bland boy meets girl situation, but I’ve never enjoyed that previously and didn’t expect that to change. Wish the book were slightly less heteronormative or willing to not box the leads into strict gender roles, but eh. The second part, once the raid starts, is significantly better. The fight and investigation scenes were vivid and significantly better written than all the previous novels. Excited to see what happens next (hopefully it’s not just Lena and Shin being vanilla�) ]]> ReadStatus8952234923 Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:16:59 -0800 <![CDATA[Alex is currently reading 'Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto']]> /review/show/7238616878 Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey Alex is currently reading Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey
]]> Review7224224630 Mon, 20 Jan 2025 12:43:05 -0800 <![CDATA[Alex added 'You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters']]> /review/show/7224224630 You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy Alex gave 4 stars to You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters (Hardcover) by Kate Murphy
A good book which I inadvertently defeated the purpose of by listening to it in the background while driving or working�
I wish it had a bit more on how to actually be a better listener—there were lots of examples of bad listeners, and some traits of a good listener, but I always felt like she cut off just before getting to how to actually become a better listener. For example, it talks about how good listeners pick up on little non-verbal cues and account for those, but nothing on how to actually be more perceptive towards those. I guess it assumes those are things you should know but are tuning out?
In take away, I have been enjoying talking to strangers more and trying to ask more useful questions, but I just wish it had more fleshed out how to develop good listening skills instead of focusing on the merits of already being one. Or maybe I was just not listening close enough and missed it. ]]> ReadStatus8766925842 Thu, 19 Dec 2024 19:59:41 -0800 <![CDATA[Alex wants to read 'The Black Tides of Heaven']]> /review/show/7101516915 The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang Alex wants to read The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang
]]> ReadStatus8766920847 Thu, 19 Dec 2024 19:58:15 -0800 <![CDATA[Alex wants to read 'The Jasmine Throne']]> /review/show/7101513322 The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri Alex wants to read The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri
]]> ReadStatus8766909415 Thu, 19 Dec 2024 19:55:06 -0800 <![CDATA[Alex wants to read 'The Space Between Worlds']]> /review/show/7101505238 The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson Alex wants to read The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
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