My pile of unread books has almost vanished and I'm waitlisted for a couple at the library, so please share what you've all been reading lately.
Oof, I've not been reading a lot lately. Most compelling read was David Wallace-Well's The Uninhabitable Earth, which you should not read if you're the kind of person who gets depressed easily by gazing into the abyss. I'm trying to not let it gaze into me. I am also positively surprised by David Epstein's Range. goobster, this is that book that the Atlantic article from recently was taken from. Epstein argues that our view of linear (hyper-)specialization in careers and in life is wrong. The book is a bit all over the place and isn't always succesful in mimicking Dan Ariely's writing style, but in general I like it. It is a book that really resonates with what's been on my mind lately, that's for sure. blackbootz I think you too might find this very useful to read sometime this year, if only because he has good things to say about Econ majors.
When blackbootz and veen came out I bullied them into coming up with a list of 10-15 books each for my eternal infernal bicycle ride this summer. They came through. And then my library informed me that Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone was available. I enjoyed bugging the shit out of Harry Potter fans by telling them I'd read the books once all the movies were out - after all, the book is always better than the movie (right?) and that way I could appreciate the movies for what they were and then get still more fulfillment out of the books. And then the last movie was made and I was busy doing something else so I'n'I have been getting my Hogwarts on. Know what I remember from popular reaction to Harry Potter? Everyone freaking out about all these kids reading and whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy would they read HP when they have no interest in The Scarlet Letter or Castle Ghormengast or Atlas Shrugged or A Collection of Proust Juvenalia or some shit like that and holy fuck, people, it's because it's fucking fun. Know why people like The DaVinci Code? It's fucking fun. I've never read any Danielle Steele books but you know what? I'll bet they're fucking fun. And for most people, fun is enough. I've got a screenplay that was basically The Martian ten years before The Martian came out. Except it's also a ghost story. And it's angsty as fuck. It is not "fucking fun." I let people convince me to write a novel after starting the Game of Thrones books because they're really good. But they're no fucking fun. I kinda wonder what my craft would have looked like if I'd picked up Sorcerer's Stone in 2001.
Harry Potter is the closest I've ever came to become part of a "fandom". I find it starts really light and fun as any kids book, but it does get a lot more serious and dark towards the end. The contrast in tone is seriously shocking when you re-read the first book after going through the series. But growing up with the books, and having years in between them it was perfect :) Enjoy!
The Sorcerer's Stone came out in Swedish in 1999 when I was 10, the same year I began learning English in school. My parents have the books in English and Swedish in their bookcases from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix going forward because I couldn't wait for the translations, but then I re-read them when the Swedish edition arrived (since my comprehension was honestly not that great), before allowing my siblings to read them. I have friends from back then then that I doubt has read any other books since then that weren't assignments. Can't really blame them. I don't know if they're available as audiobooks, but if they are, The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg is 1780 pages between the four of them, all of them really good.
They're available as eBooks. I've added them to the list. I really enjoyed the Millennium Trilogy the first time through. The second time I realized that Anita Blomqvist is not a hero and that kinda tweaked me a bit. I'd love some exposure to something better. Thanks.
One of the highlights of my parenting life was reading the HP series out loud to my kids. I ripped through them with the older cohort a decade ago, and I’m on round two with my younger kids. It’s joyful.. because they’re fun!I have been getting my Hogwarts on.
Range: Why generalists triumph in a specialized world This is an interesting dig into some new thoughts on education and learning, and how to improve your methods for learning new things. Turns out repetition in sequence is bad: repetition interleaved with other unrelated activities (even other learning) has a massive demonstrable effect on long-term retention of the learned topic, as well as benefits across all aspects of your life. This is kinda fascinating for me, who has had a 30 year career with no discernible arc or theme, and yet I have been able to slot in to almost any job or role, and quickly get up to speed and provide meaningful improvements, even in fields I am not trained in. Fascinating book. Just came out, so hardback only, but it's worth it. (I'm about 1/2 way through.)
As a fellow generalist, I think I could use that book in my life.
Just finished The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. All mixed up. Not sure whether I liked it or hated it. I've never had to read something that so regularly refers to my specific demographic- white, straight cis-male- with a kind of easy, backhanded disdain . But the fact that it rankled definitely forced me to step back and identify why I should get so butthurt about it. And fact is, those references were mostly tangential to the point of the book anyway, so then I had to examine why I should focus so much attention on those small asides. When it gets down to the meat and potatoes of the book, half of me wants to like it; Nelson is fucking smart, and she writes sentences that I have to sit and diagram, and then kind of walk around and squint at from every angle before I get the full meaning. And then those sentences interact with others in a way that changes the color of both and then I have to start all over. There's a joy to her writing that I haven't had to contend with in a long time of reading easy escapist fiction. Also, she just talks about worlds I'm only familiar with in the kind of glancing, benign ways afforded by a comfortable, cloistered progressive lifestyle. Gender fluidity, you say? Empowerment? Sounds nice, sure! But then she follows through and approaches my particular lifestyle with the reflexive dismissal that I imagine much of the country reserves for any facet of queer culture and wait, what the fuck did I do to YOU, lady? Don't pigeonhole me in with the knuckledraggers, some of my BEST FRIENDS are gay! I have a trans cousin, that's gotta count for something, right? And so on, etc. Which is exactly the kind of knuckledragger reaction I generally sneer at in others, and thus a great one to pick at and try to correct. I dunno whether she purposefully tries to elicit this response or whether she's just not writing for my demo and she really feels this way; either way, it achieves the same purpose, and it's pretty good food for the soul. The other half of me hates it, for reasons I think are legit, or noble in a literary sense, but I dunno, maybe I'm just being a misogynist? Which is a great illustration of why I hate it; the book in both subject matter and style inoculates itself from any "mainstream" criticism. At many junctures, Nelson highlights her own uncertainties and hypocrisies- acknowledges, for instance, that she fights her own urge to categorize, sometimes unsuccessfully. She wants to believe that there are no obvious taxonomies when it comes to human experience, esp vis a vis love and family structure, but her pedigree as a writer and an academic make it difficult. Which I get. But then she turns around and says something blithe like "heteroromanticism has always left me feeling icky," or something of the sort. Which, what the fuck? You can't say that all love should be approached from an individualistic point of view, but then write off an entire subset of love. Or rather, you can, but it makes you look like a hypocrite and a schmuck. Even if you acknowledge in the same breath that you recognize your own biases. Another example: early in the book, Nelson refers to a symposium she attended where one feminist philosopher was torn apart by another for publishing photographs of her (the first) with her kids in domestic settings. She was railed for basically trying to elevate humdrum family dreck into high feminist art/philosophy. Nelson uses the anecdote to elucidate her own point of view; essentially: "I side with the first lady." She then ends the book with a blow-by-blow account of her labor and the birth of her son. Spoiler alert: that shit is boring. No, man, you're just a straight white cis-male and you'll never get to fully appreciate the experience no. Shut up. It's boring. Nelson is a great writer, and this portion of the book reads like every other account of every other birth. It's like the two hundred and sixty photos of your vacation to Belize that you put in an iPhoto slideshow to play for the family at Thanksgiving. It's important to you, and that's great. But it's not singular. And you can't make it singular by pre-emptively discrediting critics of your point of view on the matter. Incidentally, Nelson tries to elevate this anecdote by interspersing it with an account, written by her partner, of her partner's vigil with their(?pronoun still unclear?) dying mother. It only serves to subtract from Nelson's account of her labor- both by making the whole thing feel like a cheap, overused trick (juxtaposition of new life on top of death and the beauty therein) and thus a little bit exploitative, and also because Nelson's writing compares unfavorably to her partner's, which is plainspoken, beautiful, and cuts like a knife. Still not sure where I stand on the book, and I really don't know if it deserved the unanimous praise it got when it came out (mostly by people who are way smarter and "in the know" than I am, so I guess that's points for praise), but goddamn did it make me think. Now I'm reading The Dark Tower series by Stephen King for the umpteenth time, and I'm not thinking at all, and frankly it's great.
I’m still half way through Hamilton. It’s great cause he’s still alive so long as I don’t continue reading.
By Ron Chernow? God I loved that book. I picked up Titan, his book on Rockefeller, based mainly on the strength of Chernow's writing. I couldn't put Hamilton down (then again, I'm a sucker for American revolutionary-period history).
I have been reading: -Visual C 5 in 21 Days 4th Edition by Nathan Gurowich & Ori Greenwich I told myself that I would learn C! I have been mainly perusing articles on FL Studio while I take time to read this, but I am still getting in a page or 2 a day! -Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman A reread. I got an extensive edition that includes the original publishing and the additions added to it. I used to read it hitchhiking and it is bringing up some good feelings. -Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins Another reread. My beloved has never read a book by the man, but I read some outloud to him and he enjoyed it. Now we take a few hours every week to read it out loud to each other. It is fun. -A Prayer for Owen Meany I honestly dislike this book so much that I have put it down and have been putting off finishing it. I might take it with me travelling to force myself to read this book, but dear lord, can I not get annoying Owen Meany's voice out of my head. My beloved is reading: -Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller An excellent sequel. -Catch 22 by Joseph Heller He finished this reread recently. We discussed how we felt about the book to each other. Upcoming: I'm hoping to read some scifi as well as read more technical books. There is also some juicy cheap erotica calling my name, but I am trying to get focused on my technical education. My boyfriend wants to read a nonfiction book on racism that I added to the library.
At least, you can hear it. As would HAVE SAID CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW . Funny fact: the all-caps was to mimic how the Christ talk in some bible (I have heard) I read the book in my twenties, twice (which I barely do). Loved it, and still vividly remember a few scene (the Armadillo, and the finger cut). I can get why you are bored by the book. I dont get the " dislike this book so much" part. Except if the religious theme make you angry. But the theme is not apparent until the very end, and it stay pretty mild. I also loved and read this book in my twenties, which make me guess you're in your twenties, and we must all go through those books :) Fun fact: most of the poem are lies. Whitman was not were he said he was (not even close), at the time he said he was. I guess art is just elaborate lyingcan I not get annoying Owen Meany's voice out of my head.
-Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
-Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
a few months ago i added project gutenberg to my feed reader so i could get alerts whenever they add a book. been discovering some really interesting stuff. highly recommended right now i am reading in the wilds of south america https://archive.org/details/wildsofsouthamer00mill/page/n8 and also baudelaire
Nature, Addresses and Lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Enjoyed reading it. Feel like I recall almost none of it.
I'm halfway through the extended version of American Gods. I read the original version a while ago and I'm loving the revisit, but I'm also easily distracted and the book is so thick it's almost a cube so my dedication is waning. I also have a friend who wanted to start a comic book book club and we're starting with Sandman, so my break from Neil Gaiman is... Neil Gaiman! It's interesting because you can see him trying out the literary tools he perfected years later.
The Looming Towers by Lawrence Wright was recommended by kleinbl00 and gives a good historical overview of radical islamism and the events leading up to 9/11. Speaking of historical overviews, Crashed by Adam Tooze on the last decade of financial and political turmoil, for someone who didn't really follow the news for large parts of it, felt sort of like watching the photos from a party you attended but don't remember the day after. My takeaway was that sure, the fire started in the U.S, but when it jumped over the Atlantic it was the EU that kept stumbling and kept it going. What We Lost in The Fire by Mariana Enriquez is a flavorful collection of short stories from Argentina. It sort of acted as a palate cleanser to me after reading a bunch of short novels by Chinese authors like Wang Xiabo, Hao Jingfang and Fei Ge. The weirdest short novel I've read lately is probably Ödmården by Nils Håkanson set in the post-apocalypse in Sweden where language and culture has become unstable and corrupted. The book is written in a mixture of Swedish slang from different time periods, Dutch loan-words and made-up words with no consistent grammatical structure. Belladonna by Croatian author Daša Drndić was also a weird read, but an enjoyable one. I've also read like three novels by Michel Houellebecq before realising it could have sufficed with one, probably The Map and the Landscape for me. Out on the Wire by Jessica Abel about the making of This American Life and other radio shows/podcasts was really interesting, but since learning how the sausage is made I haven't really been able to enjoy listening to that type of shows. I've got a bunch more books that I wanted to mention, so I'll add them later when I have the time.
Children of God by Mary Doria Russel. I started this awhile ago, but have only recently gotten back into it. A sequel to the spectacular The Sparrow, it's not the easiest read but is quite compelling. Yo el Supremo (I the Supreme) by Augusto Roa Baos. The Royal Spanish Academy has a really cool (in Spanish) edition celebrating the centenary of the author's birth. It's a fictionalized account of Paraguayan dictator Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, and focuses on the relationship between language and political power.
They're both great so far, so I'll be curious to know what you think.
I can see the similarity, although I think The Sparrow (the first book in the series) is better. Just know that it's also a much bigger emotional gut-punch.
Working on Hawking's popular bibliography starting with The Universe in a Nutshell which I am enjoying so far. An idea that I found super striking is that the universe could have multiple different histories as well as multiple different futures. Devac you mentioned Hawking's optimism and I definitely see what you mean. He sees a lot of potential and I think his writing does a really good job of communicating the boundlessness of possibility open to people and the universe in general. I also find his willingness and ability to embrace uncertainty and the unknown really personally challenging and I think I'm going to get a lot out of reading Hawking outside of the physics. I also finished Mistborn volume 1 a few days ago. Not bad, and I'll definitely finish the series, but I'm still not sure I get the hype. I guess because the magic system is unique that's most of it, and it certainly requires a different kind of creativity to use Sanderson's magic compared to say, Harry Potter, maybe that's the selling point. There also seems to be a certain Young Adult Novel feel to the whole thing that I'm not certain I can shake.
A Study of History by A.J. Toynbee. Picked it up last week, so far I'm liking it slightly better than Durant's approach. That said, it could be because Toynbee was translated to Polish and footnoted to hell and back, so I don't break the flow with near-constant dictionary look-ups. The English versions, both abridged (unrestricted access) and full (waitlisted), are on the archive.org. Brief Answers to the Big Questions by S. Hawking. I actually got it around Christmas from my brother, but only recently risen to the top of the pile. It's probably the lightest book by Hawking, so take it however you like. IMO it's worth recommending for his brand of optimism alone.
...what format do you have Toynbee in? I've got half of them as dead trees but the other half has always escaped me. And been expensive. It's somewhat of a white whale of mine. It's fair to say I read the Durants because Toynbee wasn't portable. As the natural bridge between Gibbon and the Durants it looked interesting (and has more good quotes than Frazier).
I'm reading the translated abridged version at the moment, but so far managed to locate the first nine volumes at various libraries located all over Warsaw. Dead tree format, some only accessible on site. Out of curiosity, which volumes are you looking for? I could look/ask around local antique shops over the next few weeks. Chances are slim, but it can't hurt.
Without homework, I've picked up reading as a hobby again (meaning finishing the books!). I dug up old Hubski threads after finishing The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho on my Kindle. Halfway through American Gods by Neil Gailman, which I saw pop up a lot across threads. I also have The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov queued up since that had some hot discussion in one of the threads. Probably going to put a couple of books from said threads (and this one!) between Gods and Margarita so I can ramp up the page count over time. Maybe for lack of patience, but more for want of rebuilding story retention. Could be a bogus excuse, whatevs. To it's credit, though, translations of Bulgakov (Margarita's author) are enthralling. From the chapter or so before I switched to Gods was some sweet prose. Totally counts, tho prolly deserves a separate thread: Comic books. I scarfed down Titans (the DC live action of Teen Titans - whose animated series I adored) before bed every night after working the bees in Israel. Kinda rekindled my interest in comicbook heros. Conveniently, my new place is a 15 minute walk from a comic shop. SoOoOoOo, I'm going through some of the DC universe rebirth books related to the Bat family (Batman: Hush is on order in prep for the animated movie coming out next month). Also, waiting for the first volume of Ms. Marvel to come in. If Kevin Fiege et al @ Marvel Studios really shoot for Secret Wars, then I couldn't be more excited to see a Kamala Khan on the big screen. EDIT: Added author names. Also, Robert Frost is on my list of to-reads. Just haven't thumbed through his works and picked, yet. Open to suggestions.
I’ve been working on a used bookstore sci-fi haul. The Gray Prince by Jack Vance: mentioned this one before. Mostly enjoyable read but becomes aggravatingly strawman-like by the end regarding its political subtext. Three Herbert books: Destination: Void: I liked this one a lot, but oh boy is it dense. Large swaths of technobabble that may last pages dealing with semi-fictional tech. Are people meant to understand anything out of those passages? Also very philosophical and technical. The book breaks out into fucking equations at one point. You can practically hear a distant Herbert screaming “look how clever I am” as you read it. Despite all that I still really liked it. Direct Descent: got this for the novelty factors as it’s an illustrated novel. Gave up on it halfway though. Pretty much garbage unless something amazing happens in the second half. Unlike the previous entry, there was no likeness to his other works. I imagine that this was written with a teenage audience in mind given the illustration and the overly thin and simplistic story, however nothing else about this book could be seen as appealing to a teenage audience. The inner turmoils of a library planet? Can’t get dustier than that. God Emperor of Dune: best in the lot by far, but I’m not too deep into it yet. Four books in it’s still really nice to return to Dune.
I'm currently working through A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It's slow going at the moment but I'm confident I'll get through it soon. Next up is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I've heard interesting things about this book. It's... interactive? In a way? I have thumbed through the pages a few times and it looks very interesting. I've been told there are sections in which it helps to have a mirror handy. Sounds like fun!
For fun, Illumination in the Flatwoods by Joe Hutto. Joe imprinted a bunch of wild turkey chicks on himself and raised them to observe their behavior. It's supposed to be at least a bit scientific/impartial, but it's mostly a story about loving little turkey friends. For research, System Dynamics: Modeling and Simulation of Mechatronic Systems and Programming from Specifications; the first to fill me in on some engineering knowledge from fields I haven't studied closely and the second to try to get a firmer grasp on program synthesis and refinement.