Welcome to the Book Pile Surprise episode. We didn't tell you the name of this episode because it sounds so boring and we were worried you'd skip, but it's actually really fun. It's the Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

All right, here we go.

Hey, everyone. Philosophers invented aphorisms because they know we don't read their books, but we'll read a tweet.

And this is The Book Pile.

I'm Kellanerska, and I'm a comic, a father. And as Heraclitus said, war is the father of all things.

I'm not sure how that applies, but I just thought it was cool that me and war are both fathers. And I'm David Vance. I'm always trying to say

clever things, hoping they end up in a book of aphorisms, but then a wish is only a dream you put in a

cage.

All right. If you want to see me live, I'm going to be at Wise Guys in downtown Salt Lake Lake City, December 9th through the 10th. Also, I'll be in Dallas, Texas the following week,

December 16th through the 17th. Go to kellneriskin.com for tickets.

Finally, our next two books are The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Miss Born, if we can finish it in time.

We're trying to pander to the Sanderson crowd, but man, it's long.

My experience with this book, this is probably one of my all-time favorite books. Not that it's like a

page turner, but it has just given me so many different ideas and mental models that change the

way I think or changed the way I approach life. I really enjoyed it, which is something I've

never said about a book that had this much Nietzsche in it. But I would argue that it at least was a page turner for me and that it

was a very easy read. I know, Dave, you mentioned before I read it that maybe 80% of the quotes

were fine and the remaining 20 were fantastic, which I agree with, in which I'm sure the guy

who put this book together would love to hear after he come through tens of thousands of these

to find what he thought were all the best ones. But even with the like four out of five misses,

these thoughts are just so brief that you get to the hits pretty rapidly. For me, it was like

shooting a machine gun while galloping on a horse. I don't know

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