Non Beer - The Beer Thrillers https://thebeerthrillers.com Central PA beer enthusiasts and beer bloggers. Homebrewers, brewery workers, and all around beer lovers. Thu, 25 Jan 2024 16:10:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://i0.wp.com/thebeerthrillers.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/cropped-The-Beer-Thrillers-December-2022-Logo.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Non Beer - The Beer Thrillers https://thebeerthrillers.com 32 32 187558884 Athletic Brewing Company Promotes Mindful Drinking with Launch of Track Record https://thebeerthrillers.com/2023/12/20/athletic-brewing-company-promotes-mindful-drinking-with-launch-of-track-record/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=athletic-brewing-company-promotes-mindful-drinking-with-launch-of-track-record Wed, 20 Dec 2023 17:35:31 +0000 https://thebeerthrillers.com/?p=13451 Athletic Brewing Company Wants To Help You Do Dry January

Its just about the start of the new year, and that means “new you”. A lot of people start the year off with “Dry January” as a way to take control of their drinking, their weight, etc.

Athletic Brewing Company has a new tool to encourage drinkers to ‘Give Dry a Try’ and track the days they don’t consume alcohol.

Track Record

Athletic Brewing Company, America’s largest non-alcoholic brewery, is inviting drinkers to ‘Give Dry a Try’ this January by offering an easy way to track the days they don’t consume alcohol.

Called Track Record, the new alcohol moderation tool will launch on December 27, 2023, in the Athletic Brewing mobile app and on athleticbrewing.com. Track Record will give the millions of Americans looking to cut back on alcohol a guilt-free way of practicing mindfulness and moderation.

We know that one-third of U.S. drinkers are trying to cut back on alcohol, and Track Record will enable users to easily log the days they stay dry. This convenient and easy-to-use tool will help them stay on track and maintain motivation throughout January and beyond.

Andrew Katz – CMO of Athletic Brewing Company

Consumers interested in tracking their dry days can access the Track Record feature by downloading the Athletic Brewing mobile app and tapping the Track Record icon in the navigation bar. From there, users will be able to start a dry streak and view their progress while staying consistent in their quest to establish more mindful drinking behaviors.

We’re all about progress and celebrating wins, no matter how big or small. Whether it’s a month or just a day, Track Record is the ultimate tool for your dry journey. It gives you personalized insights on your progress and lets you choose how to Give Dry a Try.

Andrew Katz

You can find the Track Record at the website, or via the various ways to download apps. The website is: Athletic Brewing Co. – Track Record.

Whether your goals include cutting back on alcohol, becoming more active, or practicing mindfulness in all areas of your life, our athletes will be sharing their Pro Tips for showing up and staying consistent all year long.

Andrew Katz

To help drinkers stay motivated this January, Athletic Brewing’s athlete ambassadors will also be sharing their own Pro Tips for how to Give Dry a Try and encouraging everyone to stay on track with their 2024 goals.

The launch of Athletic Brewing’s Give Dry a Try campaign comes at a time when 34% of Americans over the age of 21 plan to drink less alcohol over the next year. At the same time, a record-high 39% of Americans now believe that consuming one to two drinks per day is bad for one’s health.

Some Non-Alcoholic Beer Related Articles

About Athletic Brewing Company

Athletic Brewing, founded in 2017 by Bill Shufelt and John Walker, is the 13th largest craft brewer in America and the leading producer of non-alcoholic craft beer. The company’s brews are distributed in all 50 states and available at over 50,000 retail stores nationwide. In 2023, Athletic was ranked as the 4th fastest-growing company in the Americas by Financial Times. Athletic was also ranked as the fastest-growing U.S. beverage manufacturer by Inc. Magazine in 2022, and named one of TIME’s “100 Most Influential Companies.” The company has won over 75 prestigious brewing awards and has earned the title of North American Brewer of the Year in the last four International Beer Challenge competitions. Athletic has custom breweries in Milford, Connecticut, and San Diego, and donates up to $2 million annually to protecting and restoring outdoor spaces across the globe via its Two For The Trails program. Athletic Brewing is proudly a Certified B Corporation™. Its full-flavored near beers and hop-infused sparkling waters are available at www.athleticbrewing.com.

Athletic Brewing Company is making some amazing non – alcoholic beers. You certainly need to check them out, if nothing else than to try them and see if they make a good alternative to soda or other drinks for you at home.

Athletic Brewing Company (as per Untappd) is a regional brewery from Milford, Connecticut. They have 90 unique beers and over 80,000 ratings, with a global average rating of 3.45 (as of 12.20.23). Their Untappd description reads: Athletic Brewing Co. is a non-alcoholic beer company dedicated to making great-tasting craft brews, without compromise. Our lineup of styles lets you enjoy the taste and experience of refreshing craft beer without sacrificing your performance, passions, health, or good taste. They’re fit for all times, made for all palates, and enjoyed by anyone who loves a great beer.

Thank You For Reading

If you like this article, please check out our other many articles, including news, beer reviews, travelogues, maps, and much much more. We greatly appreciate everyone visiting the site!

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We are working on a massive project here at The Beer Thrillers. We are creating a map of all of the breweries across the United States. State by state we are adding maps of all of the different states with every brewery in each state. (We will eventually get to the US Territories, as well as the Canadian Provinces, and possibly more countries; as well as doing some fun maps like a map of all the breweries we’ve been to, and other fun maps.) You can find the brewery maps here:

We are also working on a project of creating printable and downloadable PDFs and resources to be able to check and keep track of all of the breweries you’ve been to. So stay tuned for that project once we are finished with the Brewery Maps of the US States.

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The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #7 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #8 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. (As of January 2023.) Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!

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Book Review: Buddhism 101 (Arnie Kozak) https://thebeerthrillers.com/2021/11/11/book-review-buddhism-101-arnie-kozak/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=book-review-buddhism-101-arnie-kozak Thu, 11 Nov 2021 19:27:44 +0000 https://thebeerthrillers.com/?p=8236
Buddhism 101 by Arnie Kozak, PhD

Book Reviews

In general, I’m going to start trying to do a better job of keeping up with book reviews; where as soon as I read the book and finish it, I’m pulling out the laptop or getting on my desktop computer and opening up the blog, and writing down the beer review. Because as it sits, I have a backlog of book reviews to throw up here on the blog now that I’ve added book reviews to the blog as part of the various sections.

I’m a rather prolific book reader; some might even say ‘voracious’ but thats a cliche and I tend to avoid them (or at least try to). Most years I hit 100+ books as per my GoodReads Book Challenge. This year I set myself up for 110, and I’m woefully behind. (This marks book number 74; though I have about 8 books or so that are all nearing completion). In the old days, before I let life really fully intervene and stress pile up, and everything got backlogged, as soon as I finished a book, I would be doing a quick semi-review / semi-write up thing on GoodReads and it would immediately post to GoodReads and my personal Facebook.

But it seems I am getting further and further backlogged, with articles for the blog, travelogues that are in states of half written or just started or not even written but need to be, old hikes that I did from the summer but haven’t written yet, and now book reviews. I need to get better in the habit of – book closed – or hike completed – or beer drank – and write up the review / article. Now that I have everything kind of condensed on the blog here, I think once I get caught up, my stress of it all will ease up and I’ll be better able to maintain a good steady pace of it.

It will also mean I actually get the articles written 1) on time 2) written period and 3) more written. Keeping myself to the grindstone and making sure I stay in the habit of writing frequently, on time, and as soon as completion, will only help that. Because as you further distance yourself from the event (ie. I finished a day of brewery hopping on Day 2… but start to write it on Day 5… and don’t finish it… by Day 9… I am becoming less and less inclined to write the travelogue) (or if I finish a book on Day 3… by Day 7 I am less likely to write the book review), it seems like you can push and put it off more and more.

So this is my attempt to right that ship and to get into a better habit of writing. Hopefully I can still make the reviews and everything fun to read, wordy, interesting, and with lots of information. I was discussing with a new writer for the blog (she’ll be posting here shortly) about my procrastination with articles seems to stem from all the side stuff. The categorizing, the tagging, the uploading to social media accounts, the making it more presentable, checking SEO rankings, etc, etc. The little nuts and bolts of it all. I love writing and enjoy the writing. Its doing things like copy and pasting HTML code and links, and if I’m writing a beer review with a pop culture reference, tagging things and tying it back in with its property (ie. a Simpsons beer with gifs from the show), that just bogs me down and makes me procrastinate and not write as much.

But not anymore… this is me writing (instead of righting…. see what I did there?) the ship. I just finished this book, and now I am launching into the book review. Huzzah!

The Book Review

Ok, so preamble out of the way. Lets get into my actual book review. Now I am streamlining a bit here. Whereas before I might have done a whole section on the Buddha, on Buddhism, with hundreds of links to various sources, I think I’m gonna opt for simplicity here. (I am also looking to finish Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut today, and having that book review up later tonight as well, where I might do much more of that, especially since today is Vonnegut’s birthday – he would have been 99 today – and its also Veteran’s Day).

At this point, I think most people have a general understanding of The Buddha and Buddhism. If you don’t, here’s two quick Wikipedia links:

This book is a summary of both concepts – the Buddha himself, as well as Buddhism and everything that it all entails. I feel like sometimes / gravitating closer to all the time – that these ‘summary’ style books can be very hit or miss. Either too much information is given and its not really a summary, its a full on dictionary of Event X or Person X or Subject X; or it is such a brief summary that to even get a more rudimentary knowledge of the subject you are digging through websites or running through a bibliography of books.

This is 253 pages of text, plus index and other source notes at the end, and I think it does an overwhelmingly good job of covering Buddhism. I am not an adherent, I do profess that I find it fascinating, I do try my hand at meditation and mindfulness from time to time, but in my ADHD addled brain, and my angst and anxiety, I am horrible at given schedules and times and things and am not perfect (nowhere near it) at keeping to regiments or staying on hand.

My attempts sometimes at meditation and mindfulness is like the old Atari game of pong, but with four thousand balls bouncing around and thirty different paddles. All the while Donald Duck is screaming in the background.

So I have to say I really like Buddhism and what the Buddha stands for. I have read numerous works about the Buddha, read some of the various dharma and teachings, and one of my bucket list goals in life is to trace the steps of the Buddha (as well as Jesus, as well as do the Appalachian Trail). So I have a great admiration for the philosophy / religion and the practice of it.

I am not perfect in my knowledge of Buddhism, but have what I would deem a rudimentary and basic level understanding of it. From karma to the noble truths, to the three fires, the three jewels, sangha, dharma, nirvana, etc. And I also know how Americans / Westerners have misinterpreted much of it. This book does a very good job of righting some of those wrongs. Expressing how karmic values work, and how karma itself works. As well as samsara, and the wheel, etc.

It also does a good job of delving into the aspects of it that makes it more philosophical rather than religious – and vice versa. The book also covers all the various schools, techniques, thoughts, ideas, and expressions of Buddhism and the Buddha.

It gives a great biography of Siddhartha Gotama Buddha and his family life, his path to the middle way, and everything else. It also does a good job of dispelling some rumors and even calls out the beliefs that people have that most likely didn’t happen.

This is a phenomenal starting point for anyone wanting to get a good idea about Buddha or Buddhism. Its not an academic work, its for laypeople and to help give them a clearer understanding and idea of the subject. When checking this into GoodReads I see its part of a series, others in the series include: American Government 101, Astrology 101, Accounting 101, Architecture 101, Anatomy 101, Mythology 101, Grammar 101, Investing 101, Economics 101, Art 101, Management 101, US History 101, Weather 101, Philosophy 101, Poetry 101, Religion 101, US Lit 101, etc etc (some thirty plus books in total).

I honestly only found this because it was in the ‘new non-fiction’ section at the Hershey Library. I find part of why my reading is so eclectic is due to always stopping at the ‘new non-fiction’ and ‘new fiction’ sections right in front of the door when entering. Its the greatest way to broaden one’s ideas and senses – by checking out books that you normally wouldn’t and reading subjects you normally wouldn’t.

I fully recommend this to anyone looking to get more information on the subject of The Buddha, Buddhism, meditation, and/or mindfulness. Its a good read, its quick, well laid out, informative, and written in a nice and concise and fun way.

My GoodReads Rating: ****
Global Average GoodReads Rating: 3.76
My LibraryThing Rating: ****

GoodReads Blurb:

Learn everything you need to know about Buddhism in this clear and straightforward new guide.

Buddhism was founded thousands of years ago, and has inspired millions of people with its peaceful teachings. Buddhism 101 highlights and explains the central concepts of Buddhism to the modern reader, with information on mindfulness, karma, The Four Noble Truths, the Middle Way, and more.

Whether you’re just looking to understand Buddhism or explore the philosophy in your own life and own journey to Enlightenment, this book gives you everything you need to know!

GoodReads: Buddhism 101 – From Karma to the Four Noble Truths, Your Guide to Understanding the Principles of Buddhism by Arnie Kozak

Other Book Reviews To Check Out

Thanks For Reading

Thank you for reading. And thank you to all of our veterans today, on Veteran’s Day. We appreciate your commitment, and time served, and your honor and duty to America.

Be sure to check back later, after my hike at Hawk Rock, and stop at Liquid Noise, when I should be uploading the book review of Vonnegut’s Armageddon in Retrospect on today – what would have been his 99th birthday.

(And be sure to check out our Instagram page as we are likely to be posting pictures!)

Cheers!

-B. Kline

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – FacebookFacebook GroupTwitterInstagramYouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

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Book Review: Free Will Explained (Dan Barker) https://thebeerthrillers.com/2021/08/27/book-review-free-will-explained-dan-barker/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=book-review-free-will-explained-dan-barker Fri, 27 Aug 2021 14:15:00 +0000 https://thebeerthrillers.com/?p=7932
Free Will Explained by Dan Barker

Free Will

As I discussed in my last book review on here – Free Will by Sam Harris – (posted yesterday, read back in March), free will, philosophy of the mind, and similar topics are some of my favorites to think about, discuss, debate, and read about in the philosophy milieu.

Dan Barker is a determinist despite his language in the book, he uses the term ‘harmonic free will’ and makes many analogies to music throughout the work. But he comes on the side of Sam Harris and others in that he believes in a deterministic viewpoint of free will.

For those interested in reading more about Free Will, definitely check out my review of Sam Harris’s book, and check out the links at the very end of the article, to some interesting works, as well as YouTube videos. I will also have some reading related links in this article as well. Ones that I think will help readers in general, rather than just about Free Will.

Book Review

Similar to most small philosophy books, this is a quick read. Chapters are two to three pages, with complete page breaks and and empty pages (with re-quotes of his own previous paragraphs on them), chapters have headings and titles and are mostly 3/4th pages.

Aesthetically, the book is really great. The feel of the pages, the overall look and appearance and presentation of the book is top notch, and it look drives buys, and it is definitely in that realm of ‘pop academia’, where, its academic study written to be mainstream and written to be consumed by everyone. Big bold chapter titles, lots of spaces and blank pages, with quotes, and little birds on a telephone wire imagery, so it really has this appeal, and it makes the simple quick read look longer, so it kind of gives that false ‘wow, I’m smart’ feeling to it after you’re done reading it. Its pretty. I like it. But it is what it is, and I’m just pointing that out.

I would recommend reading some other literature on Free Will in advance of this. Not that you have to; but it would help. Primarily as a basis, and a background to this. But also because this does reference quite a few of other works. Mostly Sam Harris’s ‘Free Will’. (Luckily for me I read these in that order.)

The chapters are broken down into small little bites that lead up to bigger fuller thoughts. He gives you a piece of this, a piece of that, and then gives you the whole. He takes a few chapters to build up an idea, presents the full idea to you, and then tells you why this idea matters. The biggest thing is, he comes up with ‘harmonic free will’. Its part of his music analogies.

Harmonic Free Will

His idea of harmonic free will, falls in line with what he calls ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ thinking. He says not everything is compatible on the same line of thinking. That there’s latitude and longitude thoughts. Vertical thoughts and horizontal thoughts. And so this is where he develops ‘harmonic free will’.

His idea of harmonic free will is that he stands by his guns (or attempts to look as if he does) that he’s a determinist. He then builds up the idea that we ‘NEED’ to believe in free will. That we have a ‘societal free will’ and a ‘moral free will’ that we all need to keep in mind. That this is what keeps us moving.

He brings up the case where a small town in 1916 hung an elephant, he discusses his chipmunk friend, and he brings up a few other cases and things of various note to explain this and give it a background. Basically he says while free will might not exist, we have societal free will, and we need to believe in it if we want to keep going as humanity. Otherwise, we are no different than his ‘Little One’ chipmunk friend. That this breakdown of free will is both compatible and incompatible (so he calls it ‘acompatible’ because of the tiered levels of looking at things that he describes).

He kind of has to run in circles to get to this point however. Stating how we have to construct our own societal moral values, and that we only have free will in regards to this societal moral values. That even a person by himself must create his own society onto himself to affect himself to have free will; otherwise he is basically no different than an animal, running on instincts and has no self – autonomy.

Conclusion

This is a bit convoluted, but it gets him to where he wants his point to be. He runs through various analogies to get there. Including Wilson (the volleyball from Castaway) to show how we fabricate our own societies. He discusses the comparisons between societies of people, and animals. But his main thesis of the work is the ‘harmonic free will’, and the ‘acompatibility’ of determinism and free will. Stating that their on two different levels of cross thought, (horizontal thinking vs. vertical thinking) and that doesn’t make one more wrong than the other. Just different. Just at cross points that need to be examined together.

Dan Barker is ordained and a former preacher, and now jazz pianist and writer. He writes as one you might have expected to be a former preacher. He’s not outright hateful of religion and theology – but he certainly paints them in a light here, especially in regards to the free will debate. His prose is nice. Elegant even. He does get a bit convoluted with his analogies. Ultimately this is worth reading. His explanations and thoughts are pretty good, and does add weight and merit to the free will debate. Sadly, his overall argument is a bit lacking, but his writing to get there, while at times convoluted, is interesting. There is a preponderance of analogies, that some might not enjoy. (Especially if one doesn’t get the references.) He also goes on a bit too long about the chipmunks and music too. (Mileage may vary of course on this.)

My GoodReads Rating: ***
Global Average GoodReads Rating: 3.84 (as of 8.27.21)
My LibraryThing Rating: ***.5

Further Reading

These are some links I think will give you some further reading on ‘free will’ and the debate of ‘determinism vs. free will’. I suggest checking them out. I also suggest checking out the generic ‘book’ and ‘reading’ links here as well. Also, make sure to check out the ‘further reading’ section of my ‘Free Will’ by Sam Harris book review.

Reading articles / memory articles:

As always, thank you everyone for reading. Please check out our other works – including book, beer, and hike reviews. As well as brewery reviews, hop growing, home brewing, travelogues, brewery news, and all kinds of nonsense here on The Beer Thrillers blog.

Cheers!

-B. Kline

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – FacebookFacebook GroupTwitterInstagramYouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

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Book Review: Wit’s End (James Geary) https://thebeerthrillers.com/2021/04/06/book-review-wits-end-james-geary/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=book-review-wits-end-james-geary Tue, 06 Apr 2021 12:30:00 +0000 https://thebeerthrillers.com/?p=7493
Wit’s End by James Geary

The Start of Book Reviews

While this isn’t the first book review on The Beer Thrillers – that honor goes to “For the Love of Beer” by Dr. Alison Feeney – this is the first non – beer related book review on The Beer Thrillers. But as I said in my last post “The Beer Thrillers Moving Forward” I’ve been wanting to do this and branching out the blog a bit more in different directions. Is the blog still going to be primarily about beer and breweries? Most certainly. This is actually something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time, and am finally now just pushing ahead and doing it. If people don’t like it, too bad, they can ignore the posts and stay at our blog for the beer reviews, brewery reviews, etc. I read roughly 100 – 110 books a year, and I’ve been wanting to write and combine my various interests on the blog (beer, books, hiking, gardening, sports, video games, etc.) and this seems one of many natural ways to do it.

I’ve already done this similarly with many of my travelogue articles. Most of them are hiking adventures or visits and tours with Ming or other people that include stops at breweries along the way. The travelogues seem to be some of the more popular posts (and outside of the March Madness tournament we just did, my travelogue about the 1000 Steps Trail and Levity Brewing is a top ten visited article here on The Beer Thrillers).

So why am I starting off with “Wit’s End” by James Geary? Well, frankly its because its the latest book I’ve read and finished. So, I figured I’d start with the most recent book read, and work back on some of the others, as well as the ones I am still reading and finishing. So there will certainly be no lack of book reviews, that’s for sure.

Wit’s End

Let’s tackle this book and give it a proper review. Not sure if I’m going to follow a specific way of reviewing every book similar to how I do my beer reviews (Example: Chocolate Covered Pretzel by Braxton Brewing Company) or if each book review will be something different onto itself.

Maybe its apropos that I start my first non book review here on the blog (well, first non – beer related book review) with one titled “Wit’s End”. This might just be the end to the wit here on The Beer Thrillers; or will it? Who knows, maybe this will grow the blog even further, who knows again. Shrug.

Wit’s End by James Geary is a series of essays on the various forms of wits and witticisms and how it’s used. Each is written in different styles, from poems, to a screen play, to a faux academic (scientific) journal article, etc. Different essays to discuss the different ways wit is used, created, performed, and displayed.

There is a decent bit here, and the book both reads fast and slow at times. Which might also be a bit of just my reading style, where I’ll get into the book, and read a fair bit, then lose myself and be bored of it, and start picking up the numerous other books I’m reading (usually four or five books at a time), and jump about. Damn you ADHD.

The writing style is obviously all over the place as each essay is done in different styles. And for the most part I think this works; but I also think Geary is a bit lackluster in some aspects to it. Not fully delving into the styles, or relying too much on the styles to get his point across rather than the work and words themselves. I enjoyed some of the essays, whilst others fell completely flat or were uninteresting, and this wasn’t primarily due to just the styling or the writing, but the actual work behind it. I haven’t read anything from James Geary before, but his writing prose seems both deft and also incomplete at times. There is quality writing, but there is also a lack of putting two and two together and making connections.

I love reading about creativity and intelligence, because I am often curious how it spawns, why I have the thoughts or ideas in my head and where things pop in at. As someone who is often told “Where the hell do you get your ideas from” or “why do you think the way you do”, I love trying to read about how this all works out; and sadly, this doesn’t do a real good job of explaining any of that.

I’m also not a big ‘punster’ and there is quite a fair amount of that in this, with a few essays / chapters fully devoted to it. Despite being a dad, I’m far from prone to dad jokes – which the pun is a staple of – and for that, actually puns usually bore me. I’m not angered by them, just bored of them. I don’t believe of them as the “lowest form of wit” but I also just tire of them easily.

I wish there was more substance to this, and more on ‘how wit is derived’ rather than describing various forms of wit. Because I think we can all point to something witty when we hear / see / read it; and so I rather see the inner workings, the behind the scenes, rather than the obvious and what I can clearly see in front of me.

I think this is an entertaining read, but I think it just lacks a lot of substance and could use a lot more to it. Frankly wish the general idea behind it was a bit more expansive than what we got, or maybe the scope was a bit different than what the book alluded to it being.

Similar to my beer reviews, where I gave my Untappd score, followed the global average Untappd rating, I will do the similar here but with GoodReads. GoodReads and LibraryThing are my primary forms of Book Cataloguing and recording using apps; they are basically the Untappd for the book world. I started with LibraryThing many years ago (honestly can’t even remember, but I want to say 2013 or maybe 2012. Sadly, GoodReads has surpassed it and I use that much more now (despite my not caring – and actually loathing – of Amazon). GoodReads only lets you review in full stars, where LibraryThing let you review down to the 1/4th star. So I will most likely be giving my review scores to the 1/4th star (similar to Untappd letting you review to the 1/4th bottle cap), but showing my rounded score via GoodReads, and then showing the global average GoodReads score.

My GoodReads score: **3/4 (rounded – ***)
Global GoodReads Score: 3.32 (as of 4.5.20).

Thank you everyone for reading my first non – beer related article on the blog and site. Curious how reaction will be to me using my beer blog to post non – beer related things and more personal things. Who knows, maybe the blog gets expanded into all kinds of new categories in the future, and it’ll look just like one gigantic spider with tons of spider webs linking to millions of things. Or maybe in the future I’ll branch out and just have a different site for these things and move them over to there.

Let me know in the comments what you think of the branching out. What you think of me doing book reviews, etc. Don’t worry though, there will still be beer related content here on the blog, especially from the other writers, as I take a bit of a hiatus from the beer side of things personally for a bit. Thank you for joining us here at The Beer Thrillers. Be sure to stay tuned for many of the various things in the future that I have planned.

Cheers!

-B. Kline

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