I finished Benjamin Franklin: An American Life at the airport last week. Walter Isaacson is a really great biographer, and Franklin as a subject is all one could ask for: interesting, quotable, exhaustively well-chronicled due to his contemporary fame, but certainly nuanced enough for Isaacson to provide a fresh take. I have talking points out the wazoo on Franklin. Did you know he pioneered the measuring of the Gulf Stream? He realized that it might behoove sailors to catch a ride going to England, and avoid it if possible on the return journey. Franklin was also curious how deep the "river on the ocean" was, so he corked an empty weighted bottle, dropped it a hundred feet down so the pressure would uncork it, then reeled it up and took the water temperature. History underestimates Franklin, is the lesson to take away. He hadn't the formal training to become a Hume or a Newton, but he came damn near to being both despite.
I was also wondering if anyone has read one of Isaacson's two newest books, on Steve Jobs and the tech industry. I don't know if they're worth it.
Next on my list in the vein of biography will be McCullough's corollary book John Adams. Won the Pulitzer but I've only ever paged through it. More and more I find biography an ideal way to learn history; not because of the Great Man phenomenon, just since facts stick more easily.
I also found a copy of the good old Maltese Falcon in a bargain bin for a buck the other day. To intersperse.
Roll call! lil thenewgreen mk b_b humanodon etc
Not a lot honestly. I finished Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman on audiobook a few days ago, and I'm about to start in on Debt: The First 5000 Years. Thinking Fast and Slow was really really interesting, and I'm planning on re-listening to it a few times, and probably getting the book from the library sometime to work though all of it's exercises. I was looking at my bookshelf the other day and seriously considered rereading the entire Redwall series.
I was actually looking for the Redwall books in my local bookstore a couple days ago. They were somewhere there, but I didn't have enough time to find their section, some of the stores are quite confusing. Or it might just be me. I loved the Redwall series when I was a kid. There is still quite a number of the newer books which I haven't read, but I might just change that. Personally, I have been reading "Min Kamp* by Knausgaard for the last month or so, on and off, and had just started the first Malazan book by Steven Erikson.
I just started reading Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. You can catch an excerpt here: So far, sooo soo so good.
I think so. I think I did about half of Steve Job's biography as audio and it worked well. I got too anxious and sat down to power through the rest. I actually stumbled upon the Elon Musk excerpt via umano and it was an excellent listen.
just finished "Old Man and the Sea" by Hemingway. Maybe it's because I used it as a bathroom reader, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get from it.
The old man needs the fish for money. But he's old and shouldn't be fishing anymore. He caught the fish because he's salty and determined but the sharks ate at it so he won't get the money he needs and he probably should have packed it in a while ago. It's a lesser Hemingway that won a Nobel because he hadn't won a major award for deserving work like A Farewell to Arms. It kinda sucks. Here, read "Hills Like White Elephants" http://genius.com/Ernest-hemingway-hills-like-white-elephants-annotated
Then read "Everything Like White Elephants" http://the-toast.net/2014/05/14/everything-like-white-elephants/
I picked up Nicholas Carr's The Glass Cage on an Audible sale recently. So far it's a nice book on the history of automation and the way people and society respond to it. I already knew some of the stories in it, though. Finished Debt: The First 5000 years which has more than a few interesting conclusions (e.g. that capitalism works best if we think it will collapse soon, and that the periods in which capitalism was at its most stable, rampant speculation and crises occurred). If you don't mind a lot of history (the second half of the book is mostly that), it's a great read. Also finished Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson, on kleinbl00's recommendation. What a fantastic book, with a great ending as well. Right now I'm a third into Atul Gawande's Being Mortal. I was expecting a bit more philosophical book, instead of a book that explains why nursing homes are terrible in regards to quality of life (which I already knew). I hope the rest of the book is a bit more interesting. On my reading list: more Jon Ronson, Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom, Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel Dennett and maybe Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert Putnam if I have the time. Looks like I'm gonna have to buy three more Audible credits...
I've nearly finished "The Wind Through the Keyhole", which is a Dark Tower "extra" novel, set in time between books three and four, I believe. It's a good quick read; SK knows how to tell a story (and we all say thankee).
In between chipping away at the giant archive of LessWrong blog posts on Kindle, I finished your recommended Blue Highways. By that time I had already spotted my next book in the local little free library (background). Kraken seems to be a good example of the New Weird genre to which the author belongs. It is not quite as fascinating as The City & The City, but plenty strange. I imagine it would be the result of wrapping a novel around the phrase Centuries of dissident cephalopod gnosis.
TC&C was fascinating but also a bit overwrought and I've heard Perdido is similar. There are quite a few very good books on that little shelfshot. I have been dedicating my time to Worm, so this might actually mark the longest time between EY-consumption for me since 2011.
Other than the books I use to teach and classroom related materials, I haven't made much time to read. I started Saul Bellow's "More Die From Heartbreak" a while back, but I think starting it directly after a different Bellow book was a mistake. I did convince a class to read The Unbearable Lightness of Being yesterday, so that's something I guess.
I never read the bio of any American presidents, but I did read the collected writings of Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, probably America's two most eloquent presidents. There is a famous poem Lincoln is said to have written to a mother who had lost 5 of her sons as soldiers in the Civil War, if I remember correctly. Most have not read it, so I will copy it here: "Dear Madam, I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, A. Lincoln"
Not really reading, but I've started listening to audiobooks now that i spend 1h30 a day in the metro. I finished "how to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie last week :) It's a classic I see many people recommending all the time so I figured it's something to get out of the way ass soon as possible. I can't say I learned anything new, but listening to that kind of thing in the morning definitely makes you more aware of your attitude for the rest of the day and I feel like I've been better at listening and smiling than usual the past week. I've also had pretty pleasant interactions with strangers so I'll try to keep up the attitude now that I finished the book. I definitely see why so many people recommend the book :)
I have begun Candide, and while it's the shortest read you could imagine, I can't seem to find time to finish it. Large stretches of time, more than ten minutes are hard to come by of late. We have had visitors though and they just left so I expect to get some reading done this week.
I'm embarrassingly close to finishing The Emperor of All Maladies. But I've been painting since I got back to my apartment a few weeks ago and it's distracting me from reading and writing another Hubski modern art lesson. The book is so good. I love history and reading about when people blamed things we didn't understand on the most ridiculous shit but there's not too much of that. The author makes modern scientific research pretty enthralling and it puts into perspective how short a time we've been medically competent instead of rubbing leeches and chicken blood on each other. It makes me appreciate what we actually do right given all the time we were amputating everything
Good catch on The Maltese Falcon. Need to dig into some MacDonald and Leonard. Thanks for reminding me.
Right now, I'm just getting into Naked Lunch after taking a reading break for finals. I'm heading out out to San Francisco next week, so I've got that, The Dharma Bums, A Clockwork Orange, Catch-22, Point Counter Point, Inherent Vice by Pynchon and volume 3 of My Struggle by Knausgaard to work on on the plane and while relaxing. I will probably take Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra too, to re-read parts of while at Yosemite.
I'm reading Drown by Junot Diaz. It's amazing and I'm so addicted. lowfe posted a list of books. I'm just going down the list. It started with The Joy Luck Club and I knew it would be good. Thank you!!!
Hey crossstitch! Glad you like the list I put up! "Drown" definitely was an interesting read. I feel like Diaz puts a little bit of himself in every character he writes, not just the protagonist. I hadn't read anything that real since "Crank" by Ellen Hopkins. I just finished "Lolita" and it was one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. Nabokov is a new favorite of mine. Message me if you want to discuss any of them!
Exactly! I live in the NW so a lot of the books that come my way are based from around here. The change of scenery is refreshing but mainly educating and enlightening!! It's wonderful! That's one reason I really enjoyed The Joy Luck Club. Books like that, definitely Drown, really give me a sense of what daily life is like in another culture.
I just finished Jared Diamond's Collapse on audiobook, and I am just getting going on Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, thanks to wasoxygen. Collapse wasn't as interesting as Guns, Germs and Steel. Still, I think Diamond gets more flack than he deserves, and there was some good food for thought in it. Also, I previously knew nothing about the failed Viking settlement of Greenland. I can tell that Cryptonomicon is going to be a good read. I'll probably go back to Churchill after that. Book four of his five on WWII.
Stephenson just came out with a new book which wasox and I have been angling unsuccessfully to get free copies of via "social media." Everything the dude does is gold, so I'm pretty pumped. Although I still haven't gotten to the newest of the last guy I said that about, David Mitchell.
I've been trying to read:
- Legacy of ashes : the history of the CIA by Tim Weiner I've been actually reading:
- Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson ... I really want to like Legacy of Ashes. I find the content really interesting, but something about the presentation just makes it really hard for me to process. It's a weird combination of conversational tone and footnote heavy content which, for whatever reason, just doesn't work for me. There are so many figures introduced that it is hard to keep track even if I could grok the style. So I've been rereading the Baroque Cycle for the third time. Still on the first volume, but it is a work I really love. Repeat reading has fleshed the world out a lot for me.
I'm reading about how to use games and gaming to teach. More importantly so I can have intelligent conversations with people who don't "get it" in real life. I'm about 1/3 through http://amzn.com/1403984530 and next will be http://amzn.com/0143120611 I've been doing more science outreach and the teachers out here are very hit and miss on where they stand on the uses of technology and games. If I can find a few good books in this theme I plan on passing them around.
Hmm... the most recent one I finished was Mindsharing by Lior Zoref. Bought the book from a store on a whim, and it was pretty interesting seeing how he saw the potential of tapping on online social communities to gather crowd wisdom. It might not be completely revolutionary, but it's still generally up to date in terms of the changes seen in the online social scene.
http://hpmor.com/chapter/113 -- You have 60 hours. Your solution must at least allow Harry to evade immediate death,
despite being naked, holding only his wand, facing 36 Death Eaters
plus the fully resurrected Lord Voldemort. If a viable solution is posted before
12:01AM Pacific Time (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015,
the story will continue to Ch. 121. Otherwise you will get a shorter and sadder ending. We passed.the art of crowdsourcing everything
This is your final exam.