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Very interesting… he seems to be a good guy.
I can’t say The Road is one of the best books I’ve read in the sense of being an enjoyable read… Like I said at the time, it is slow and creepy. But I think it was one of the most important books I’ve ever read. It is one of those things that get better as time goes by.
I think it is similar to a very difficult test, that you suffer throughout but at the end you are proud and enjoy the results. I would never do it again, but I am glad I’ve been through it once.
My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir
Clarence Thomas’ biography is a powerful book. It starts by describing his childhood as a very poor kid in Georgia and all the tough times he went through. It focuses specially on him being raised by his grandparents and how important his stern grandfather was for him and his brother.
The most interesting part though is the latter chapters on how his career developed. Thomas talks about how racism really works in corporate America and government. He talks about how affirmative action negatively impacted him throughout his life, and also speaks at length about all the crazy schemes liberals have tried during his life to ‘ameliorate’ our race issues. It is a required reading for anyone who believes in liberal policies to solve racism.
Finally, the last part of the book is about his career in Washington. You get to hear plenty about the Anita Hill debacle, but the surprise to me was Thomas’ experiences with Joe Biden. I always thought Biden was a smug and stupid politician but I never thought he was such a dishonest and lying piece of garbage. Truly sad.
In any case, this is a great book about an American success story. A poor black boy who went from nothing to a seat in our Supreme Court.
Numerati is about how numbers and statistics are playing an increasingly important role in our society. It describes examples on how corporations are exploring this and all the potential behind it.
Not really a ground breaking book, but it is an interesting one nevertheless. I still would recommend it to anyone who is interested in technology and math.
Another Japanese book that surprised me a great deal. This is truly a fantastic read. A page turner, filled with the perfect mix of ‘real’ science and fantasy.
It tells the story of Aki, a Japanese girl who is the first to discover that something is wrong with Mercury. She ends up becoming a scientist and leading a team who investigates the origins of a ring that has started to form around our sun.
Anyone who has any interest at all in sci-fi should buy this one immediately.
I have to admit that I bought “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel” for two reasons: first, I have never read a book from a Japanese author, and second because the title sounded completely weird and yet clever.
It was a good bet. Haruki Murakami is everything that I expected Kafka to be: crazy, imaginative and funny. It’s almost like going through one of those dreams where things don’t quite make sense but yet you wanna to keep going. It might not be a book for everyone (my wife is not quite liking it so far) but I loved it. So much so that I went right to another one of his books, “The Elephant Vanishes: Stories”. It is a good collection of short stories but not as good as Hard-Boiled Wonderland. I think I will give the genre a rest for a while.
I also just finished reading Federations, which is a collection of short science fiction stories by several authors. Many I already knew (Scott Card, Alastair Reynolds, Turtledove (which just came out with an alternative history book I am eager to read: Hitler’s War, which passes on a world where Chamberlain does not sign the Munich Agreement) and a few others. Overall the book is very good, and it has made me aware of several new authors that I will give a chance in the near future.
I am currently reading The Numerati and My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir (by Clarence Thomas). So far I am enjoying both very much.
It’s official: Flash Forward the TV show is on! Series Premiere is Thursday September 24th 8/7c.
Here is a preview:
Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) it looks like they changed a lot of the story from the book. Why change the future to be closer? Why make the main character the cop instead of the scientist?
Ah, TV execs.
Sometimes it becomes really obvious just how early we are still in the information technology revolution. Information might be out there, but it is still really hard to find what you really want.
How else could you explain the fact that I didn’t know who Robert J. Sawyer was until a few weeks ago? I mean, this guy is just amazing, one of my new favorites. A probable contender for the favorite author spot. No kidding!
First I read “Calculating God”. Now, how many books that talk about God, the origins of our universe, religion, death and eternal life can be truly entertaining, insightful and at the same time ideologically balanced and funny? That was definitely a first to me. Add a good bit of “pop science”, light romance and a surprising ending and you have one of the best books I’ve read in recent memory.
I then moved quickly to “Flash Forward”. Really, this book totally consumed 2 weeks of my free time (which now a days is extremely little). Here Sawyer basically talks about free will, but in such a imaginative and centered way that it makes you much more open to considering opposing point of views. The end is a bit exoteric but overall this is again a incredibly entertaining and rich book.
I just started “Hominids”, the 2003 Hugo Award winner and the first volume of his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy. Here he begins with parallel universes, neutrino labs and Neanderthals who have quantum computers. It is again a totally different book from the other two, and so far it looks very promising.
Waste no time and start reading this guy.
Living in a place that is gloomy and rainy 10 months a year has a few (very few) advantages. I’ve been reading quite a few interesting books. American Gods was my first Neil Gaiman’s and it was so good that it led me to read another two (Fragile Things and Neverwhere). Unfortunately, I think I am done with him. After a while it all started to read the same.
I’ve also been watching a lot of movies. Funny how Watchmen was different than I thought. It is a essentially a bad movie, with some very interesting characters. I am thinking about reading “Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test”.
Talking about that, this article says that Rorschach is Alan Moore’s vision of an Objectivist superhero. I wonder how a communist hero would be like. At least we already know how a Democrat superhero looks like.
—x—
My daughter needs to write an essay about the differences between capitalism and socialism.
That is what I call bad timing.
I’ve just finished reading “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference”. This is the second Malcolm Gladwell book I’ve read (first was Blink, which I thought was not great but very entertaining).
Tipping Point is also very entertaining. It is about how human behavior can spread like an epidemic. How Paul Revere was able to bring the American resistance together so effectively? Why teenagers in the Western world smoke? How crime in NY declined so much so fast?
The study cases are are well thought out and Gladwell does a good job on coming up with a framework that dissects the different components in play. He comes up with 3 factors that determine whether something will “tip” or not: “The Law of the Few”, “The Stickiness Factor” and “The Power of Context”. It all makes sense, especially because he ties well each example and their correspondent rule.
I do get a funny feeling that in the end this is all pretty much common sense and Malcolm’s theories are just a rationalization of different forces in action. It sounds right to say “teenagers smoke because it is cool”, but is that really the root cause here? Same thing with his 3 archetypes in the Law of the Few. I mean, you have the people who network well, the technical experts and the people who can sell you anything… This is pretty much how all modern companies are divided anyway, isn’t it?
But again, rearranging ideas into new orders is not such a bad thing. At least the book doesn’t try to come up with some fake controversy or purposely attacks opposing point of views. The core idea there is really that small changes can make a big difference, and that is by all means true. A nice read.
By the way, the guy has a blog. A good one too.
One book I read last year and forgot to mention in my previous post was “Atmospheric Disturbances” by Rivka Galchen. Now this is a book that I would understand being called “classic” in the sense that it is a weird, stylish but still very good read.
This one I also recommend.
Rainbows End: A Novel With One Foot In The Future by Vernor Vinge
The end was a bit dull but overall this was a very fun read.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Slow and creepy. And still I could not put it down. It has a very powerful message about the will to live and how right and wrong can exist in any context. I recommend it.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Nothing spectacular but I enjoyed it. A little hard to understand what the fuss was all about. Cursing is not that bad and at the same time, I don’t see why this is a required read for high school.
Glasshouse by Charles Stross
Started out good but then it became really boring. And Charlie’s biases really get into the way. I mean, even out in space the priest is always the bad guy? Please.
Halting-State by Charles Stross
Very weak. It felt like he wrote this in a day and nobody revised it. It was the final drop in the bucket and made me get out of the Charlie’s wagon for good.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Another book that I enjoyed but could not understand what the fuss is about. Why do people consider this a classic? Just because the main character is a loser?
America: The Last Best Hope (Volume II): From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom by William J. Bennett
Very good. That is the kind of book that should be required in high school…
American Empire: Blood & Iron by Harry Turtledove
The plot is interesting but for some reason I could not read it until the end. Just too detailed and too slow.
Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power by John Steele Gordon
Another great history book that should be required to anyone who is at least interested to understand why the US became the great country that it is today.
Tales of H. P. Lovecraft by H. P. Lovecraft, Joyce Carol Oates
I enjoyed some of the stories (best one was “The Shunned House”) but this also felt like an over hyped author. I thought “The Call of Cthulhu” was like a mediocre X-Files episode.
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
Solid Sci-fi. I recommend it.
Ulysses by James Joyce
Truly unreadable. Only recommended to masochists.
Rama II: The Sequel to Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
Very good, but not as much as the original. A bit too much fluff and too little Rama.
“Whales produced a cornucopia of products. Besides the meat, the blubber, when dried out, produced an oil that was an excellent fuel for lamps as well as lubricant for machinery.
…
New England whaling began as early as 1645.
…
By the nineteenth century Americans whalers were found throughout the world’s oceans, and voyages often lasted two years, sometimes four. In 1800 some three hundred whalers operated out of such New England ports as Provincetown, Nantucket, New Bedford, and Marblehead. By the 1840s there were more than seven hundred American whaling ships searching the seas for whales and turning their home ports into boom towns as the ships unloaded as many as two thousand barrels of oil each of the end of their voyages. Many of the early nineteenth-century New England fortunes were based on whaling.Unfortunately, the New Englanders were too good at catching whales and caught them faster than the great mammals could reproduce. As the world’s stocks of the various species declined, the voyages became longer and longer (it was an American whaler who discovered the Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn Island in 1808). The price of whale oil rose steadily as demand continued to increase faster than supply.
But one of the underappreciated aspects of a free-market economy is how it deals so efficiently with shortages.
…
As the price of whale oil increased (it reached $2.50 a gallon in the 1850s, when $5 a week was a good wage for skilled labor) the search for other illuminants and lubricants increased as well.
…
The solution to the problem of finding a cheap, good illuminant came from a wholly unexpected source: rock oil. Petroleum (which means rock oil in Latin) has been known from ancient times but was largely a curiosity. Its principal use was as a cure all medicine.
…
In 1853 a Dartmouth graduate named George Bissell happened to be visiting his old school when he saw in a professor’s office a bottle of rock oil that had come from western Pennsylvania. He knew that the stuff was flammable and suddenly conceived of the idea that it could be turned into an illuminant. He organized a small group of investors and asked one of the country’s leading chemist, professor Benjamin Silliman Jr., of Yale to look into the possibilities.
…
But while Bissell and his investors now knew that they could manufacture a highly saleable commodity from rock oil, the supply of rock oil was still very limited. An industry could not be based on what could be skimmed from ponds. Then Bissell had another epiphany. Shading himself under a druggist’s awning in New York City on a hot summer’s day in 1856, he noted an advertisement for a patent medicine made from rock oil that showed several derricks of the sort that were used to bore for salt. The rock oil used in the medicine, it happened, came from the oil obtained as a by-product of drilling for salt. Bissel wondered if it might be possible to use the technology of drilling to find oil.
…
On August 27, 1859, outside Titusville, at sixty-nine feet, the first oil well in the world struck oil. The biggest problem quickly became not finding oil but finding enough barrels to store it in.”
This is from the excelent “Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power“, one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time.
The book has many, many examples of how the US and its market economy have reacted (and succeeded in most cases) when faced with resource scarcity or new competition. It is truly a testament of Yankee ingenuity and how private industry transformed this vast No One’s Land into the biggest economic success in human history.
Hopefully our bloated government won’t mess it up and make this great story end.
I highly recommend this one to anyone looking for a good science fiction book.
I did read another book from Alastair Reynolds last year (Revelation Space) but I was not that impressed. Instead I embarked in a Charlie Stross craze (I read Accelerando, Halting State and Glasshouse in sequence) which ended in a somewhat sad disappointment (the weird fascination Charlie has with sex identity issues gets old really quickly).
Century Rain is just a great book. It is defined in Wikipedia as a “noir science fiction alternate history mystery novel”.
Yup. It’s all of that and more.
He was actually the closest book to me when I read about yet another senseless blog chain (open the nearest book to you on page 161 and read the 5th complete phrase). Like all senseless things, this one had an unexpected result – a good one.
Here is a bit of Mr. Emerson’s wisdom for your Sunday (the 5th phrase by itself wouldn’t do it justice so here is the whole paragraph):
“A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature. Respect them, for they have their origin in deepest nature. What your heart thinks great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.”
From Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson – From the essay “Spiritual Laws”
I finally finished reading Alex’s “Radical Rebelde Revolucionário – Crônicas Cubanas”.
Alex was nice enough to send me his book and I feel bad to say that I didn’t like it very much.
My first problem was his style. It reads too much like a blog. I don’t mind colloquial books but I think he went too far.
Second, some of the main subjects of the book don’t really interest me. I am not into Cuban literature. I am also not that interested in all the “human conflicts” that Alex seems to like so much: taking pictures of Cuban women, the tales about his blonde friend and their Cuban cicerone, etc.
It’s not all bad though. I thought some of the more factual parts of the book were interesting, like the history of Reinaldo Arenas, the weird relation of cubans and “Sorveteria Copélia”, the way Cubans interact with their police, etc.
I also liked the fact that overall Alex admits that the end result of the Cuban revolution was poverty. In times where you have Michael Moore saying that hospitals in Havana are better than those in Miami, I feel relieved that Alex is not in that category.
However, the thing that bothered me the most about this book was this underlining tone that Alex takes about the Cuban system.
Even though he criticizes Fidel’s government often, he is always throwing some little nuggets here and there that work like an excuse for the craziness of Cuban’s life.
For instance, he seems to love to talk how educated the Cuban people are (ignoring how this wonderful education didn’t help them to revolt against a barbaric dictatorship and widespread poverty) and makes an amazing comparison of these Cuban illuminati with an “American college student who didn’t know that Brazil had cows!”
Another example: check this description of how Cuban maids deal with the prohibition of their work (all private independent work is illegal):
“Em dias de limpeza, Antonia e sua vizinha almoçam juntas e comem
da mesma comida. Não há uniforme. Antonia somente limpa: não lava
roupas, esfrega a bunda da velha ou faz qualquer coisa não-relacionada.
Quando termina o serviço, vai pra casa, seja a hora que for. Muitas vezes,
trabalha somente de 10h às 15h.Observei as duas longamente: são vizinhas e amigas. Não parece
haver o conceito ou a idéia, nem a mais vaga percepção, de uma relação
patroa-empregada. Antonia não pensa ou se refere a sua vizinha como
chefe, patroa ou qualquer termo indicativo de escala social, dominação,
poder econômico. Não a chama de usted, não usa o doña. Ao mesmo
tempo, também não se define como criada, empregada, explorada: Antonia
pensa em si mesma como ajudante e na outra como amiga a quem ajuda. “Maybe it’s just my underdeveloped humanist side talking, but this sounds like a cheap rationalization for an absurd situation where people clearly want to exchange services and need to fake a friendship to do so.
So bottom line, Alex’s lack of a more grounded and consistent criticism of Cuba’s crazy socialism really annoyed me.
In any case, thanks Alex for the book and good luck.
I like to debate with myself what would I do if I had been born in a different time.
For instance, who would I vote for in past elections?
Would I be a Republican in 1940? Would I be a Whig in 1840?
Is my conservatism just a belief in a certain set of ideas or is it a tendency to like the status quo of my time?
I am reading The Plot against America and it deals specifically with this kind of problem. I mean, I’d have been completely against a lot of the social policies of FDR. But I am totally against isolationism that was prevalent in the Republican Party. So what would I had chosen?
I think the current division in American politics is much less problematic than before. I am mostly a economic conservative, and even though I am in the middle on social issues, I think the Democrats take the liberal stance way too far. More than Republicans do on the other side.
But I guess the real differentiator is foreign policy. I could never vote for someone who doesn’t understand how violence works. That is internally but most importantly externally. It should be a pre-req for any candidate to understand how easily a country can be destroyed. All one needs to do is to look at the recent history of 2WW.
People who don’t understand how close the whole thing was should stay out of politics. Even more importantly, people need to understand the absurdity of what happened after it. I would bet that 99.9% of people in the world have no idea that the 3WW started right after the second when the Russians violated the Potsdam Agreement.
This should be the most important lesson of both great wars: that the most gruesome and murderous war in history was followed by another war of choice (against previous allies) by the country that arguably suffered the most after both wars, the Soviet Union.
So my conclusion (and hope) is that I’d vote for the party who best understands human violence.
Good to Great
A lot of it sounds commonsensical but still I would recommend it to everyone (not only people interested in how a business can succeed).
Accelerando
His ideas around technology are very clever but there is a sexual creepy factor here that feels very much out of place; It gets in the way of the story as much as his left leaning politics.
Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
I was a bit disappointed with this one. The author goes into way too much detail about every little personal relationship and leaves the differences of what each one believed and how impacted the ideology in the background.
The Bear and the Dragon
Fun read but not on par with the other Jack Ryan books.
History of Political Philosophy
A bit convoluted at times but still a very good reference of political thought.
Revelation Space
Great sci-fi. A little light on technology details but very fun to read.
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
I haven’t finished it yet but so far so good.
Next on my list:
Radical Rebelde Revolucionário – Crônicas Cubanas
America: The Last Best Hope (Volume II): From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom
Last week was Shakespeare’s day (people believe he was born and died on the same day – April 23rd).
My favorite passage of his is from Hamlet, and it takes place when Hamlet is anguishing on whether he should or not kill the king. Here it is:
“What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused. Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’event –
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward – I do not know
Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do,
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me,
Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puffed,
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
Is not stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake.“
Check this out: David Louis Edelman has listed my brief comment about Infoquake in his Critical praise and reviews page. Now that is really cool!
I really wish that Infoquake turns out to be a big success. Not only because I am curious about the two sequels but because I think this “business world of the future” theme is one of the least explored fields of SF and one that has great potential.
So if you have 10 bucks to spend on a book go ahead and get a copy of Infoquake. It’s well worth it.
Good books I’ve read this year:
The Wisdom of Crowds
Very good. I got it because I didn’t quite believe the idea, but it makes a good case for collective wisdom.
America: The Last Best Hope (Volume I):
From the Age of Discovery to a World at War
Great history book. Easy to read and full of little unknowns facts.
Rendezvous with Rama
Classic. I’ve read it when I was younger but wanted to check the english version.
Anthem
Not as good as Fountainhead but still entertaining.
On Classical Economics
Probably too technical for non-economists. But still interesting.
Childhood’s End
Kind of bizarre… but still as good as any Clarke’s.
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Loved all of it, except the end.
Infoquake (The Jump 225 Trilogy)
Probably the coolest SF I’ve read in the last 5 years.
The Economics of Life
A little outdated but still worth it.
The Bear and the Dragon
I have not finished it yet, but so far I like it.
How about you all? Any good books to recommend?
Outro dia a NPR fez uma pesquisa sobre qual figura histórica as pessoas escolheriam para conhecer pessoalmente. As respostas foram as de sempre, de Clinton à Elvis, mas a pergunta ficou sambando na minha cabeça por um bom tempo.
Resolvi que não poderia ser alguém muitíssimo mais inteligente do que eu, como o Einstein. Também não poderia ser alguém que viveu há muito tempo atrás, como Platão.
Pensei no Ben Franklin, Churchill, e Marx. Esse último aliás, chegou bem perto de ser minha escolha. Já pensou poder finalmente perguntar “What the fuck were you thinking?” ao vivo?
Mas eu estava dando muito valor à nomes, e não ao quanto eu realmente me divertiria. Reconsiderei minhas prioridades, e no fim das contas resolvi que escolheria o Heinlein.
Eu sei que ele não foi um gênio, e muitos nem consideram ficção científica literatura de verdade. Mas acho que não existiria nada mais interessante do que passar umas horas falando com esse maluco. Um cara que foi soldado, inventor, agente imobiliário, político (primeiro de esquerda e depois libertário), dono de uma mina de prata, e finalmente escritor.
Escreveu 32 livros, e mais de 40 short stories. Meus favoritos são: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Citizen of the Galaxy, e o melhor de todos, Job: A Comedy of Justice.
Nenhum outro autor escreveu tantos livros que eu tenha gostado tanto.
O que eu acho de mais interessante nas estórias do Heinlein é essa variedade de temas e interesses. Ele escreveu sobre tecnologia (fez até umas previsões bem proféticas), política, sociologia, religião, racismo, feminismo, psicologia, etc. Melhor ainda, ele não tentava achar solução para tudo, ou promover essa ou aquela causa. O objetivo era mostrar a complexidade dos problemas, e os absurdos criados pelas teorias mágicas de sempre.
De alguma forma, acho que nós iriamos hit it off rapidinho, e a conversa seria boa.
Mas enquanto não inventam essa legítima Door into Summer, continuo minha conversa virtual pelos livros.
8 down, 24 to go.
Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, é um livro sobre os poderes e armadilhas do nosso lado direito do cérebro. É um livro sobre thin-slicing, gut feeling, speed traps, e outras teorias sobre como nosso lado criativo pode ajudar (ou não) a tomar decisões acertadas.
Enfim, o livro não é grrreat, mas é legalzinho. Vale a pena ler.
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Agora sim, o governo americano tem um bom motivo para fechar a fronteira do Sul: Migrar para EUA faz mal para saúde de mexicanos.
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Alguns blogs interessantes de nomes peculiares:
De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum
Neologistic
Write in water
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