Recently finished an excellent book for
#bookstr, “What’s Wrong With The World” by GK Chesterton
I’ve read some of his novels which I enjoyed, but none of his political/philosophical work and have to say I was delighted.
Weird word for me to use to express my feelings about a book, but this was truly a delightful read. Chesterton’s prose is 🤌 From reading social media posts or LLM outputs to this, it’s like being transported to another realm - a much better one that you want to be in for longer.
Incredibly prescient thinker, this book was written in 1910 but has aged super well.
His angle is brilliant. Instead of ranting about what’s wrong, he argues that we don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about what is right and what a good life looks like and uses that as his frame.
Puts capitalism (the crony type) on blast, education as a tool of making drones for the State, and the way he dissects women’s suffrage is excellent - truly the most coherent articulation of why it’s a bad idea, as he could see what we would lose socially from this change and he writes it without sounding like a misogynist incel.
Found myself re-reading sentences and paragraphs a lot in this one, one example was his “theft of a triangle” (excerpt in pic 2) point which had me giggling - he has a knack of being able to express the things we should care about not in some cardinal ranking system, but in a way that makes us human and truly resonates.
Highly recommend this one, his way with words alone is worth it. I’ve got some more of his stuff on the list for later this year which I’m quite looking forward to!
