theseasoul's reviews
447 reviews

Didn’t realize it was going to be about vampires. 

|| 2.5 ⭐️ ||

It’s another okay book on nutrition that lays out some good information. Could be a decent starting point for learning about how metabolism works and how food (and other factors) can either promote or prevent disease.

But there’s a lot to unpack here. As I read more and more nutrition books they’re all starting to feel very similar. Like many that I’ve read, Good Energy goes extremely in-depth into various specific cellular functions and specific nutritional components’ impact on those. While this is super interesting to read about, I’m increasingly grateful that God takes care of all these little mechanisms and we don’t have to know too much about them in order to remain healthy—all we really need to know is the basics of what and how to eat. I can’t help but feel like someone new to using food as medicine would find all this information more overwhelming than it needs to be.

Another thing that a lot of nutrition books have in common is an overemphasis on nuts and fibre. As per usual, the author goes on about how sugar has never been consumed in such high doses until recently, yet ignores the fact that the same goes for nuts and seeds and instead encourages people to eat them liberally… including as a substitute for grains, which people have been eating since the beginning of time. There is never any mention of proper/traditional preparation of nuts/seeds/grains if we do choose to eat them. She also tries to make a case that veganism can be an acceptable diet, despite lacking loads of the basic nutrients she repeatedly admits we need for optimal health. These things are always a bit baffling to me when professionals write about them, regardless of how many studies they cite.

The chapter on stress and mental health was heavily secular and new age and I disagreed with a lot of the proposed solutions. Especially when BetterHelp was recommended as a good way to find a therapist….yikes. And psychedelics… even more yikes.

I did appreciate the chapter on circadian health, which is something many books on health overlook. 

Finally, being a doctor who left the mainstream system to start her own private practice, she gets into a lot of the problems with the Western healthcare system from an insider’s perspective. That was very interesting and I agreed with her take wholeheartedly there.

|| 4 ⭐️ ||

Encouraging and reassuring exposition of Romans 8. While it is a rather long-winded commentary, Romans 8 is a very rich and beautiful chapter that could probably be written about for several more hundred pages. It’s so good to be reminded of the extent of God’s grace and permanence of our salvation (and if anyone thinks believers can lose their salvation, Romans 8 refutes that notion pretty quickly!) 

|| 3 ⭐️ ||

I’m attracted in many ways to the simple, quiet, nature-filled life that Thoreau describes himself living in this book. He paints the setting with so much detail that I could easily picture myself there when I really tuned into the writing. That said, it was hard to do—the sheer amount of description, much of it very mundane, bogged me down often. Especially in the second half of the book, when the philosophical thoughts fizzled out a bit and the number of very specific run-on details grew. 

|| 4 ⭐️ ||

For my first attempt at reading in-depth about court trials, this was surprisingly interesting. Of course, that’s partially because the topic of glyphosate has intrigued me for quite some time. But I wasn’t expecting to find the court proceedings themselves so interesting. I didn’t know much about how trials like these work, and it’s amazing how much of a… game they can be. It seems like it’s often more about saying the right thing and trying to make someone say the wrong thing than it is about actually examining the truth and getting to the bottom of it. 

I also didn’t find myself always agreeing with the author, who was representing the victims of glyphosate injury (the side I agree with). He’s a doctor, and a highly specialized one at that—which means he is trained to view systems of the body in isolation, and seemed to have very little knowledge about how the entire body works together. He was more determined to get to the root of these peoples’ health issues than most doctors are, but I still found it greatly lacking. So it was eye-opening to learn more about how specialists think too. 

I’m surprised Monsanto is still allowed to exist and sell products. They’re so blatantly corrupt. I hadn’t even realized just how bad it was. But it seems like when you have a lot of money, you can get away with pretty much anything. 

|| 2  ⭐️ ||

Disappointed by the heavy evolutionary stance and the fact that over half of this book hyperfocuses on environmentalism and climate change. I would’ve enjoyed many more chapters on the actual brilliance of the abyss and its creatures—scaly-foot snails and yeti crabs and bone-eating worms? Soooo cool! More chapters like those, please… the ones that put God’s astonishing creativity on display and nod to all the mystery that still remains to be unveiled. I’m fascinated by all that, but I’m tired of reading about how the earth would be better off without humans. 

|| 4 ⭐️ ||

The first half was a bit more philosophically dense than my brain could handle today, but everything I did absorb from this little book was excellent. Wiley builds a really good case for the role of the household as it relates to society and religion, in terms of duty, piety, and stewardship.

The concept of verticality especially stuck out to me—the whole idea that mainstream thought attempts to remove hierarchy (the vertical dimension; God being above humankind and everything in between) from every societal structure. With the elimination of verticality, it makes sense why the patriarchy is commonly considered oppressive nowadays; a father/husband could selfishly impose his own will on his household, without the possibility of divine accountability. But with a proper, biblical view of hierarchical structures, this isn’t the case. There is verticality above him, and he serves to represent the household to God, and God to the household. I never thought about hierarchy in this way.

DNF at 33%. I guess I’m just not in the mood for dragons, curses, royalty, and a political plot. It feels very cliche so far.

Already too many references to masturbation/sex.

|| 4.5 ⭐️ ||

As far as middle grade novels go, I’ve never read one that made me so emotional. This story of three orphaned children seeking out their forever family during WWII is so sad, but so sweet. I also, of course, loved the bookish theme. The library as a haven and the children’s love for reading everything from picture books to The Count of Monte Cristo to the Encyclopedia.