The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

Earlier in the year I shared my favorite books that I'd read during the first four months of 2018. Well we are now approaching the end of August so it's time to share my favourite books from May to August! Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Brave New World is usually described as a dystopian novel but for me that's simplistic.Huxley gives us a near future world where through the use of genetic conditioning and what is essentially brainwashing, everyone is bred for their place in society and is perfectly happy to inhabit it. When they do occasionally start having emotions they take the side-effect free drug soma to stop them. Everyone compares this to George Orwell's 1984 though they are very different books. 1984 is about a government using technology to control its citizens for their own purposes. Whilst there's a similar idea here, the world controllers of Brave New World aren't really controlling the people to suppress them- they are doing it to make t...

I returned from Rome feeling like a romantic poet having returned from the Grand Tour. Before it was an Amazon show featuring former Top Gear presenters, the "Grand Tour" was where 17th,18th and 19th century elites took trips around the continent to immerse themselves in foreign culture, visit ancient ruins and admire renaissance art. This was largely the purpose of my visit, albeit on a lower budget. Frankly, 21st century Rome doesn't have a lot going for it. It's a city which seems to take no pride in itself, full of litter and graffiti with a disorganised road system which leads to crossing the street leaving you fearful for your life and with a constant sound of car horns blaring in the background. It's also become such a tourist site and I know that I was part of the problem but a place loses something when it's main purpose for existence is tourism. The artist AJC Hare summed it up well back in 1871: "Nothing can be more depressing to those wh...

I've had a great first week of the summer holidays with the whole family off work at the same time, a rare occurrence indeed. On Tuesday we headed up to London and the British Museum. The museum houses incredible historical artefacts stolen from countries across the world. The museum was full of people, especially Japanese tourists stereotypically taking photos of everything in sight. The crowds meant it was difficult to see everything clearly but the museum is so vast you could visit every day for a year and probably still not see everything. That's fine though because you can focus on certain things. I love history. I think many people see it as dull, thinking it's all about kings and queens, battles and endless dates. For me though history is all about people. It's the story of people who lived before we did and there's so much to learn about what being human means. I enjoyed the Egyptian section, largely looking at mummies and the fascinating Egyptian beli...