| 1 | (((|William| |Blake|) |
| 2 | "Blake is my [[William Blake][favorite]] of the English poets. His |
| 3 | unique use of relief etching and watercoloring makes for very |
| 4 | interesting Illuminated works. There is a very high quality |
| 5 | [[http://blakearchive.org][complete archive of Blake's works]] online |
| 6 | with high resolution plate scans and full transcriptions among other |
| 7 | things." |
| 8 | ("The Four Zoas" |
| 9 | :fiction 10 |
| 10 | "The unfinished manuscript of Blake's longest apocalypse. The |
| 11 | Four Zoas divide from Albion and rage through the ages of dismal woe |
| 12 | to bring about the end of the cycle of Ulro and restore the cycle of |
| 13 | Beulah.") |
| 14 | ("Jerusalem" :fiction 10 "The finest of Blake's Illuminated works.")) |
| 15 | ((|Kahlil| |Gibran|) |
| 16 | "Kahlil Gibran is fairly interesting; his earlier works do not |
| 17 | agree with my æsthetic sense (blah blah), but *The Madman* onward are |
| 18 | all rather nice. A few of his works are |
| 19 | [[http://leb.net/~mira/][online]], but I recommend scouting used book |
| 20 | stores for old hardcover editions. The (late 90s onward at least) |
| 21 | *hardcover* versions from *Alfred A. Knopf* are in fact permabound |
| 22 | paperbacks with a hardcasing, and are of seriously inferior quality to |
| 23 | the editions from the 50s and 60s (and cost quite a bit more, |
| 24 | naturally)." |
| 25 | ("A Tear and a Smile" |
| 26 | :fiction 3 |
| 27 | "One of Kahlil Gibran's earlier works, I did not much like *A |
| 28 | Tear and a Smile* excepting the last poem (\"A Poet's Voice\").") |
| 29 | ("The Prophet" :fiction 9 "") |
| 30 | ("Sand and Foam" :fiction 7 "An interesting little book of aphorisms.") |
| 31 | ("The Madman" :fiction 8 "")) |
| 32 | ((|John| |Taylor| |Gatto|) |
| 33 | "Former teacher and now author-activist." |
| 34 | ("Underground History of American Education" |
| 35 | :nonfiction 9 |
| 36 | "An interesting *underground* history of the American education |
| 37 | system. Available |
| 38 | [[http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/][online for free]].")) |
| 39 | ((|Luke| |Rhinehardt|) |
| 40 | "" |
| 41 | ("The Dice Man" |
| 42 | :fiction 7 |
| 43 | "<quote> |
| 44 | And it's his illusions about what |
| 45 | constitutes the real world which are |
| 46 | inhibiting him... |
| 47 | His reality, his reason, his society |
| 48 | ...these are what must be destroyed |
| 49 | </quote> |
| 50 | |
| 51 | A quotation from one of my [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughter_of_the_Soul][favorite metal songs]] inspired me to grab |
| 52 | this book; at worst it would be a waste of time. Much reward was found |
| 53 | in this random stab in the dark. The book is framed as an |
| 54 | autobiography of the author as a psychoanalyst, and his progression |
| 55 | through life as a Dice Man after deciding to live his life through |
| 56 | random chance. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | The style, plot, and content are equally neurotic; part comedy, part |
| 59 | attack on psychoanalysis, and part deep philosophy. It was often |
| 60 | difficult to put down, and was read in under a week of spare time.")) |
| 61 | ((|Neal| |Stephenson|) |
| 62 | "" |
| 63 | ("Snow Crash" |
| 64 | :fiction 9 |
| 65 | "As one must read the *Bible* to understand English literature, so one |
| 66 | must read *Snow Crash* today to be a nerd. In the realm of modern pop |
| 67 | fiction this is one of the better books I've read; it was devoured in |
| 68 | a mere four nights. Neal Stepheson may not be Milton, but he does come |
| 69 | up with enganging tales. *Snow Crash* has a nice undertone of (quite |
| 70 | accurate) political and social commentary that makes it worth reading |
| 71 | as more than mere cyberpunk fiction.") |
| 72 | ("Cryptonomicon" |
| 73 | :fiction 8 |
| 74 | "I read *Cryptonomicon* when it was new, and at the time I thought it was |
| 75 | good. It could have lost a hundred or so pages without detracting from |
| 76 | the plot, but it was easy reading and didn't take very long to |
| 77 | finish. The story was enganging, and the continual switching between |
| 78 | the 1940s and present day slowly unravelled the tale in a nice way. |
| 79 | |
| 80 | I'd still have to recommend *Snow Crash* if one wished to read only one |
| 81 | Stephenson novel.")) |
| 82 | ((|Marcus| |Aurelius|) |
| 83 | "" |
| 84 | ("Meditations" |
| 85 | :nonfiction 6 |
| 86 | "I enjoyed reading this collection of meditations on Stoic |
| 87 | philosophy. It is a fairly quick read; I read each of the twelve books |
| 88 | before sleeping over the course of two weeks. Toward the end of the |
| 89 | collection things get a bit topically repetetive (e.g. acting |
| 90 | according to the nature of man is reflected upon over and over), but |
| 91 | each repetition looks at the topic in a slightly different light. A |
| 92 | number of passages I found quite inspiring, and scratched them down in |
| 93 | my notebook to ponder further.")) |
| 94 | ((|Søren| |Kierkegaard|) |
| 95 | "Kierkegaard was a master of style and philosophy; his writing is |
| 96 | interesting even if one finds the theistic extentialism espoused |
| 97 | disagreeable." |
| 98 | ("Sickness Unto Death" |
| 99 | :nonfiction 10 |
| 100 | "I purchased this when I was looking through books at a store after |
| 101 | being unable to find the book I really wanted, and I must say that it |
| 102 | was better for me to have found this one. |
| 103 | |
| 104 | Contained within is a beautiful analysis of despair in the context of |
| 105 | Christianity (really theism in general). Even if the argument offends, |
| 106 | the presentation cannot. The dialectical nature of despair is |
| 107 | reflected in every aspect of the work, and the method of presentation |
| 108 | forces reflection.") |
| 109 | ("Either/Or" |
| 110 | :nonfiction 10 |
| 111 | "Composed of two portions, *Either/Or* is a rather lengthy but |
| 112 | rewarding read. The first book is a series of essays and a diary of a |
| 113 | young esthetician; the second is a pair of long letters from an older |
| 114 | ethicist friend to this esthetician. You are then left to resolve the |
| 115 | conflict between the views.")) |
| 116 | ((|Thomas| |More|) |
| 117 | "" |
| 118 | ("Utopia" |
| 119 | :fiction 7 |
| 120 | "I read most of Utopia in high school with the TI-89 ebook reader, but |
| 121 | the way the book was split up made it a bit difficult to grasp the |
| 122 | overall structure. I found a copy at a used book store one day, and so |
| 123 | I read it again, and found it much more comprehensible. It is a quick |
| 124 | read, and decent piece of literature. The interesting social system |
| 125 | espoused resembles resembles state communism (even if perhaps as a |
| 126 | negative ideal), but with an strange blend of 14th century European |
| 127 | social customs.")) |
| 128 | ((|William| |James|) |
| 129 | "" |
| 130 | ("The Varieties of Religious Experience" |
| 131 | :nonfiction 7 |
| 132 | "[[William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience][A partially finished extended summary]]") |
| 133 | ("The PhD Octopus" |
| 134 | :nonfiction nil |
| 135 | "<quote> |
| 136 | America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things |
| 137 | in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable |
| 138 | unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which |
| 139 | bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate. It seems to me high |
| 140 | time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye |
| 141 | upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly |
| 142 | from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest? |
| 143 | </quote> |
| 144 | |
| 145 | [[William James - The PhD Octopus][Full Text]]")) |
| 146 | ((|Henry| |James|) |
| 147 | "The novelist brother of William James; I've not read many (read: |
| 148 | one) of his books, but what I did was decent." |
| 149 | ("The Altar of the Dead" |
| 150 | :fiction 7 |
| 151 | "A short novella about a man who maintained an altar in a church |
| 152 | for all of his lost loved ones on the surface, but something a bit |
| 153 | more beneath.")) |
| 154 | ((|Gregor| |Kiczales|) |
| 155 | "" |
| 156 | ("The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" |
| 157 | :nonfiction 10 |
| 158 | "AMOP is useful as a reference to the CLOS MOP (although less so with |
| 159 | the online MOP spec), but the true value of the book lies in the first |
| 160 | half of the book. It presents the design of the CLOS MOP through a |
| 161 | series of revisions that fix limitations of earlier implementations |
| 162 | and gradually work toward a generic and well designed MOP for |
| 163 | CLOS. Through that process one is made more aware of a few general |
| 164 | object protocol design skills, and gains insight into how to cleanly |
| 165 | make mapping decisions customizable.")) |
| 166 | ((|Friedrich| |Nietzsche|) |
| 167 | "A bit acerbic and esoteric, Nietzsche is for me a good *secular* |
| 168 | counterpart to Kierkegaard's theistic philosophy. Nietzsche's |
| 169 | polemical works raise important questions for anyone who reads works |
| 170 | on ethics. As such it is a shame that he has gotten a bad reputation |
| 171 | by being read by far too many angsty teenagers who see (and relay) |
| 172 | only Nietzsche the asshole rather than Nietzsche the master of the |
| 173 | polemic." |
| 174 | ("Beyond Good and Evil" |
| 175 | :nonfiction 8 |
| 176 | "A somewhat more comprehensible, if a bit less aesthetically |
| 177 | pleasing, presentation of much of the philosophy found in *Thus Spoke |
| 178 | Zarathustra*. The final chapters are very important (not to detract |
| 179 | from the value of the rest of the work) if one wishes to understand |
| 180 | *On the Genealogy of Morals*.") |
| 181 | ("On the Geneaology of Morals" |
| 182 | :nonfiction 9 |
| 183 | "*On the Geneaology of Morals* is a wonderful book of three |
| 184 | polemical essays on the origin of moral/ethic valuations, and the |
| 185 | blindness of modern philosphers whose very thinking is tainted by |
| 186 | these valuations unknowingly."))) |