James Garside

Don't do debt. Debts are bad. M'kay?

This is an important, influential and historic text. A landmark in research on the scientific and therapeutic uses of LSD. That doesn't make it fun to read. I don't doubt it's significance but beyond its opening remarks on the nature of human consciousness I got very little from it. It's just too dense — or I am. I got much more from listening to Robert Anton Wilson wax lyrical about this book than I did from the book itself.

Read: 2008
Reread: 2011
Reread: 2014
Rereread... you get the idea.

I'm pretty sure these kind of books are made on an assembly line.

This is a completely ridiculous book. I mean that in a good way. A book so long and labyrinthine that you're not supposed to read it. But I read every word. Tools of Titans is essentially a collection of notes from Tim Ferriss's podcast taken from the best bits of interviews with people ranging from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ariana Huffington to some random knob jockey that you've never heard of but has made a lot of money. It's split into three sections — Healthy, Wealthy and Wise. For about what feels like the first 2/3 of the book, in the Healthy section, it's full of advice from freakish superhumans that like to do things like jump in an ice bath or lift heavy objects whilst standing in a river. The only thing that makes that section interesting is it's so far outside your comfort zone that it pushes the boundaries of what you'd consider normal. There's some excellent advice, anecdotes and wisdom in the other two sections but it all feels a bit fragmented and the whole is less than the sum of its parts.