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Finalist #10 in the Book Review Contest

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-righteous-mind

[This is one of the finalists in the 2022 book review contest. It\u2019s not by me - it\u2019s by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done, to prevent their identity from influencing your decisions. I\u2019ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you\u2019ve read them all, I\u2019ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked - SA]

I didn\u2019t read The Righteous Mind for a long time after I knew about it. This was partly because I don\u2019t get through much in the way of new reading material. A friend of mine told me yesterday that he\u2019d read something like 130 new books this year. That was on February 20th. I\u2019ve read one, and it was The Righteous Mind. Another friend releases Spotify playlists every Friday of the greatest hits from the many new albums he\u2019s listened to that week. I\u2019ve listened to one new album this year. It was Selling England by the Pound, which he recommended. It was my first foray into Genesis and I loved it. I now have to keep telling him that, no, I haven\u2019t listened to any more Genesis or Peter Gabriel since then, but I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll get round to it within the year.

This is to make the point that I\u2019m starting from a low base rate of reading things. I still think I put off reading The Righteous Mind for unusually long, though, given how interesting I find the subject matter. The reason, I think, is that I sort of felt like it wouldn\u2019t be very interesting, because I\u2019d kind of know and agree with all of it already. Given how slowly I absorb new books, I like them to either be challenging, or a new and informative look at things I just don\u2019t know very much about yet. I don\u2019t mean to come across as some sort of sage of intellectual piety and good habits of mind who scorns the comforting embrace of being validated. I read plenty of political bloggers that I mostly agree with! I just don\u2019t tend to use books for that.