Recently read and recommended:
Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis
The author sets out to describe the world of tournament Scrabble, but in
the process, winds up, descending into that world himself. While the
quirky characters and the Scrabble culture are fascinating, the idea that
detail that stuck with me the most is the way that most of the elite players
had given up learning the meanings of words and had turned to regarding
and officially allowed "word" as just a pattern of letters.
The moral? The price of obsession seems to be that it can define you
completely, so be careful what you get obsessed with.
The Evolution of Consciousness by Robert Ornstein
An entertaining disection of the nature of consciousness with lots of
pop psychology anecdotes. Having been thinking about this topic for
several months, I was gradually coming to some of the same conclusions,
but Ornstein does a good job of convincing the reader that the mind is
actually composed of many minds, the "squadron of simpletons", each
taking control in different situations. This is what makes perfect consistency
or rationality hard, but it also makes humans highly adaptable. While
I do not agree with all of his conclusions, I can certainly recommend this
book to anyone who wants to think about the mind and the meaning of
consciousness.
Watchmen by Alan Moore
While I have never read comic books before, Watchmen was such an
intelligent story and a clever use of the medium that I am already on the
lookout for another great comic.
Jipi and the Paranoid Chip by Neal Stephenson
An incredible short story by my favorite author. While I was bothered
initially by confusion as to whether it was set in the Diamond Age
universe or the Cryptonomicon universe (or maybe all of his stories
are in the same universe, just at different times),
eventually I got swept up in the events and the ideas. Of all the short stories
that Stephenson has written, this, I think, is the best.
Older reviews
|
Currently reading:
Check out my media
journal where I am currently tabulating media inputs and experiences
and sometimes commenting on them. It's chiefly an experiment to look at
patterns in my media consumption.
|
| I have a known propensity for what you might describe as the literary
equivalent of the first-person shooter: stories that put characters into
difficult situations from which they escape using extreme cleverness.
|
Still searching for:
Eifelheim by Michael F. Flynn
Alexander's End by Joseph Garber
|
Will get around to eventually:
Shadow Star by Chris Claremont
First-Order Principles for College Teachers by Robert Boice
|
|
![[Book]](bk6.gif)
Prior to the advent of the Internet, it was tricky to find books that
I enjoyed. Now, I have overcome that problem with the help of
book-recommending sites, especially
www.AlexLit.com. AlexLit's strength
is its "collaborative filter" which starts by having you rate a
bunch of books and then matches your tastes with a couple hundred other
people so that, by looking at their preferences, it can predict
with certain probabilities what you will like and how much you will like it.
I was initially skeptical, but its recommendations have repeatedly
led me to some of the best books that I have read in the last
few years.