Enjoying this. It's scientific journalism more than science, as some of the more antagonistic reviewers point out, but does a good job of illustrating a shift away from behaviorism to various forms of cognitive science in studies of animal behavior, and contains some great stories. Very readable.
Thelonious Monk The Life and Times of an American Original.
Thanks to whoever pointed out this was on sale a little while back. I am about a fifth of the way through and finding it more absorbing than expected - read it for five hours straight on a late night flight the other night, and have another five hour flight ahead of me now so should get a chunk further. Enjoying it a lot and learning a lot.
As always with Kearns-Goodwin it was quite enjoyable. I really wish there had been more about the journalists, though. After mentioning TR's "muckraker" speech they mostly disappeared from the narrative.
A well written book about a fascinating period of English history. I never really exactly understood what the War of the Roses was about, but now I'm getting a better picture. Although I have to constantly look at Wikipedia to remind myself who's who; especially when a player is referred to by title one place, and then by name later. I don't read enough history, but this is keeping me interested.
Its in this volume (featuring another two years' worth of Pogo strips) that we meet one of Walt Kelly's boldest political caricatures. Folks across America had little trouble equating the insidious wildcat Simple J. Malarkey with the ascendant anti-Communist senator, Joseph McCarthy. The subject was sensitive enough that by the following year a Providence, Rhode Island newspaper threatened to drop the strip if Malarkey's face were to appear in it again. Kellys response? He had Malarkey appear again but put a bag over the character's head for his next appearance. Ergo, his face did not appear. (Typical of Kelly's layers of verbal wit, the character Malarkey was hiding from was a "Rhode Island Red" hen, referencing both the source of his need to conceal Malarkey and the underlying political controversy.)
Yes, I've got a lot out of it, almost finished now. It is a good lead in to more specific reading. The edition I'm reading is the third published in 2003. Some of the books on my reading list are too general and not academic enough for me. They are a bit like student assignments, making general, sweeping statements where I just write 'evidence?' Fee and Stuart, whilst not being a truly academic text is written by university based authors.
I'm also reading the first Hunger Games book in French, it's my first proper (non graded, although I chose it cos the language is fairly straightforward) novel in French. So it will take me forever at a page or so every few days.
That reminds me of the time when I was much younger I tried to read Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan in the original French. I did get about a third of the way through before I reverted to the English translation - I'd got parts of the story wrong though!
It was interesting. A bit different than most Murakami. While the protagonist was a Japanese male who had gone through some mental anguish, there was no mysticism, the dissociative female was only discussed and did not appear, and there WASN'T A CAT!!!! Not my favorite of his stuff by any stretch, but not a bad read either.
Picked this up for free a little while back when it was on offer for a while as a junk read. First-time author. Quick read. Some flaws, but actually rather enjoyed it - if you could fancy a crime novel criticized by the one star amazon reviewers for having too little action, too much dialogue and no closure at the end (the observations are correct, except those are not weaknesses) and praised by the five star reviewers for its strong emphasis on characterization (at least for the main protagonists - the extras are more stereoptypical), this is an enjoyable couple of hours.
I know. I often find the 1-star reviews on Amazon really helpful in finding the better free/quick reads - if the 1-star crowd say it's too wordy, takes too much time describing things, not enough action etc. then it has promise. If it then has some good reviews too, it may be worth a try.
I've been on a serious reading kick for several months (so much so that my music listening has been affected). About six months ago, I got quite caught up in the young adult science fantasy "Ranger's Apprentice" series, and after I exhausted all of the books in that series, I discovered the old 80's classic "Magician" by Raymond Feist. That proved to be just about the best series I've ever read. Finished all four of those books plus two more followup books set some years later, then read all three of the Empire Series, a companion to the Magician. The Empire Series was best of all, by far!
Moved on to The Belgarion - read 14 books in that series and am out of what to read next - til tomorrow, anyway, when the new Brotherband book comes out on Kindle.
Needless to say, I have been in a fantasy mode lately.
Just finished this. It was voted sci fi novel of the year on Goodreads by a healthy margin. I did not find it as great as that might suggest, but it was good, absorbing, and interesting. It's a future Robinson Crusoe - a lone astronaut gets accidentally stranded on Mars with IIRC 90 days of food and water and no functioning communications and the next Mars mission is in 4 years. He has to make it using only realistic scientific processes.
I think reading it helped make me more curmudgeonly. I was just in the campus store and saw a wall ornament that said "shoot for the moon; if you miss you'll still land among the stars". I've seen that before and thought it cheesy before, but my first thought today was "Shoot for the moon; if you miss you'll slowly asphyxiate in your own CO2 amid a barren vacuum instead of being home for supper."
Mine's less catchy, but I think there's some wisdom in it too.
In this beautiful and richly illustrated book, the acclaimed author of Blue and Black presents a fascinating and revealing history of the color green in European societies from prehistoric times to today. Examining the evolving place of green in art, clothes, literature, religion, science, and everyday life, Michel Pastoureau traces how culture has profoundly changed the perception and meaning of the color over millenniaand how we misread cultural, social, and art history when we assume that colors have always signified what they do today.
Recently finished the 13th Floor Elevators book. It was enjoyable, but the author made some curious choices in trying to explain mental illnesses (when he CLEARLY didn't have a full grasp on them) and occasionally he'd skip to a different subject in mid paragraph, which was disorienting.
Now reading Neil Gaiman's first Sandman. I've never read a graphic novel before, so it's taking some adjustment.
Having finished volume 15 (posted a few pages back) I am now tackling the larger volume 14 of documents from the time when Bonhoeffer was leading the illegal seminary at Finkenwalde. It's 1000 pages of letters, documents, and large quantities of student notes from his lectures. It's a lot to wade through but there's plenty of interesting stuff. I just passed the half way mark so have high hopes of finishing it this lifetime.
On the side I am also working through:
Having read a couple of reviews on Amazon, and being a third of the way though, I would venture to say that it does not seem to me as good as its fans suggest or as bad as its detractors claim. Solid second-tier fantasy writing. (The first tier being really rather sparsely populated).
So I guess I am kicking off my 2015 Goodreads reading challenge with a couple of 1000+ pagers.
Perichs new book 0.01s captures the inner workings of 1-Bit Symphony over the first hundredth of a second after it is switched on. In just 0.01 seconds, its processor executes 80,000 computational cycles, enough information to fill a 695-page book with austere tables of numbers and machine language, beautifully chronicling the way computation works.
Not a recommendation, because I have not read it, but based on reading reviews one of today's Kindle daily deals looks more interesting than most of their daily deals: Saga: A Novel of Medieval Iceland
Decided to give it a try, though it will be a while before I get to it.
Fun to read this article from the trade mag "Mix" on the Smoke Sessions record label, the most exciting jazz thing to come down the pike last year, IMO: http://mixonline.com/news/venues/smoke-jazz/423321. Excited to see they have 10 new releases planned for this year - ! Have already seen Facebook announcements of sessions by Eddie Henderson and Gary Bartz/Buster Williams.
Meanwhile,
Interesting, detailed history of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," the anonymously-authored pop science sensation that cleared the ground for Darwin. Reads a bit dry at times, but an incredible piece of scholarship. It will give you a new appreciation of Phrenology (or Phrenologists, anyway).
I mentioned Saga: A Novel of Medieval Iceland above. It turned out to be rather good. Really well done historical fiction that is genuinely historical and gives you a glimpse of what medieval Iceland might have been like.
Worked through another couple of volumes of Bonhoeffer. Going for the collected works.
Now half way through Alastair Reynolds' latest. It's characteristically good.
More relevant to the general theme of this site, I am dipping into
a book about everyday sounds as music by an electronic musician. Can be downloaded free here.
Comments
Enjoying this. It's scientific journalism more than science, as some of the more antagonistic reviewers point out, but does a good job of illustrating a shift away from behaviorism to various forms of cognitive science in studies of animal behavior, and contains some great stories. Very readable.
Thanks to whoever pointed out this was on sale a little while back. I am about a fifth of the way through and finding it more absorbing than expected - read it for five hours straight on a late night flight the other night, and have another five hour flight ahead of me now so should get a chunk further. Enjoying it a lot and learning a lot.
As always with Kearns-Goodwin it was quite enjoyable. I really wish there had been more about the journalists, though. After mentioning TR's "muckraker" speech they mostly disappeared from the narrative.
Today I'll be starting the new Murakami.
Craig
A well written book about a fascinating period of English history. I never really exactly understood what the War of the Roses was about, but now I'm getting a better picture. Although I have to constantly look at Wikipedia to remind myself who's who; especially when a player is referred to by title one place, and then by name later. I don't read enough history, but this is keeping me interested.
For a course I'm doing on Applying the Bible
I'm also reading the first Hunger Games book in French, it's my first proper (non graded, although I chose it cos the language is fairly straightforward) novel in French. So it will take me forever at a page or so every few days.
It was interesting. A bit different than most Murakami. While the protagonist was a Japanese male who had gone through some mental anguish, there was no mysticism, the dissociative female was only discussed and did not appear, and there WASN'T A CAT!!!! Not my favorite of his stuff by any stretch, but not a bad read either.
Now starting:
Craig
Picked this up for free a little while back when it was on offer for a while as a junk read. First-time author. Quick read. Some flaws, but actually rather enjoyed it - if you could fancy a crime novel criticized by the one star amazon reviewers for having too little action, too much dialogue and no closure at the end (the observations are correct, except those are not weaknesses) and praised by the five star reviewers for its strong emphasis on characterization (at least for the main protagonists - the extras are more stereoptypical), this is an enjoyable couple of hours.
Craig
I've been on a serious reading kick for several months (so much so that my music listening has been affected). About six months ago, I got quite caught up in the young adult science fantasy "Ranger's Apprentice" series, and after I exhausted all of the books in that series, I discovered the old 80's classic "Magician" by Raymond Feist. That proved to be just about the best series I've ever read. Finished all four of those books plus two more followup books set some years later, then read all three of the Empire Series, a companion to the Magician. The Empire Series was best of all, by far!
Moved on to The Belgarion - read 14 books in that series and am out of what to read next - til tomorrow, anyway, when the new Brotherband book comes out on Kindle.
Needless to say, I have been in a fantasy mode lately.
Just finished this. It was voted sci fi novel of the year on Goodreads by a healthy margin. I did not find it as great as that might suggest, but it was good, absorbing, and interesting. It's a future Robinson Crusoe - a lone astronaut gets accidentally stranded on Mars with IIRC 90 days of food and water and no functioning communications and the next Mars mission is in 4 years. He has to make it using only realistic scientific processes.
I think reading it helped make me more curmudgeonly. I was just in the campus store and saw a wall ornament that said "shoot for the moon; if you miss you'll still land among the stars". I've seen that before and thought it cheesy before, but my first thought today was "Shoot for the moon; if you miss you'll slowly asphyxiate in your own CO2 amid a barren vacuum instead of being home for supper."
Mine's less catchy, but I think there's some wisdom in it too.
Now reading Neil Gaiman's first Sandman. I've never read a graphic novel before, so it's taking some adjustment.
Craig
Having finished volume 15 (posted a few pages back) I am now tackling the larger volume 14 of documents from the time when Bonhoeffer was leading the illegal seminary at Finkenwalde. It's 1000 pages of letters, documents, and large quantities of student notes from his lectures. It's a lot to wade through but there's plenty of interesting stuff. I just passed the half way mark so have high hopes of finishing it this lifetime.
On the side I am also working through:
Having read a couple of reviews on Amazon, and being a third of the way though, I would venture to say that it does not seem to me as good as its fans suggest or as bad as its detractors claim. Solid second-tier fantasy writing. (The first tier being really rather sparsely populated).
So I guess I am kicking off my 2015 Goodreads reading challenge with a couple of 1000+ pagers.
Saga: A Novel of Medieval Iceland
Decided to give it a try, though it will be a while before I get to it.
This book is not making like Reagan anymore than I did, but that's pretty clearly not Perlstein's goal.
Craig
Meanwhile,
Interesting, detailed history of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," the anonymously-authored pop science sensation that cleared the ground for Darwin. Reads a bit dry at times, but an incredible piece of scholarship. It will give you a new appreciation of Phrenology (or Phrenologists, anyway).
I love a good Douglas Adams' book!
Also currently working on this as part of a slow attempt to get some good comics read:
And wow! Really loving that.