Reading.muse

   1 #title The Printed Word Is Stronger Than Nuclear Arms
   2
   3 I enjoy classical literature and works of philosophy and politics with
   4 a side of cyberpunk novels for when my brain is tired. When I was in
   5 High School I read technical books for fun, but now I tend to find
   6 most of them useless (thank you Internet) excepting a few really well
   7 written ones (*L.i.s.p*, *TAOCP*, ...).
   8
   9 I spend most of my time reading. A full list of things I have read
  10 would be impossible to compile, but here I am collecting links and
  11 small summaries of things I have read and find interesting enough to
  12 mention, but not always recommend, to others.
  13
  14 * Authors
  15
  16 ** William Blake
  17
  18 His poetry is the result of spending too much time etching copper
  19 plates and breathing the fumes. Quite wonderful indeed.
  20
  21 * Fiction
  22
  23 ** General
  24
  25 *** Luke Rhinehardt - The Dice Man
  26
  27 <quote>
  28 And it's his illusions about what
  29 constitutes the real world which are
  30 inhibiting him...
  31 His reality, his reason, his society
  32 ...these are what must be destroyed
  33 </quote>
  34
  35 A quotation from one of my [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughter_of_the_Soul][favorite metal songs]] inspired me to grab
  36 this book; at worst it would be a waste of time. Much reward was found
  37 in this random stab in the dark. The book is framed as an
  38 autobiography of the author as a psychoanalyst, and his progression
  39 through life as a Dice Man after deciding to live his life through
  40 random chance.
  41
  42 The style, plot, and content are equally neurotic; part comedy, part
  43 attack on psychoanalysis, and part deep philosophy. It was often
  44 difficult to put down, and was read in under a week of spare time.
  45
  46 ** Philosophical
  47
  48 *** Khalil Gibran - The Prophet
  49
  50
  51 ** Sci-Fi
  52
  53 *** Neal Stephenson
  54
  55 **** Cryptonomicon
  56
  57 I read *Cryptonomicon* when it was new, and at the time I thought it was
  58 good. It could have lost a hundred or so pages without detracting from
  59 the plot, but it was easy reading and didn't take very long to
  60 finish. The story was enganging, and the continual switching between
  61 the 1940s and present day slowly unravelled the tale in a nice way.
  62
  63 I'd still have to recommend *Snow Crash* if one wished to read only one
  64 Stephenson novel.
  65
  66 **** Snow Crash
  67
  68 As one must read the *Bible* to understand English literature, so one
  69 must read *Snow Crash* today to be a nerd. In the realm of modern pop
  70 fiction this is one of the better books I've read; it was devoured in
  71 a mere four nights. Neal Stepheson may not be Milton, but he does come
  72 up with enganging tales. *Snow Crash* has a nice undertone of (quite
  73 accurate) political and social commentary that makes it worth reading
  74 as more than mere cyberpunk fiction.
  75
  76 * Non-Fiction
  77
  78 ** Education
  79 ***  John Taylor Gatto - [[http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm][Underground History of American Education]]
  80
  81 Contained within this book (available online for free, but the printed
  82 copy sits wonderfully on a shelf) is a detailed and seemingly well
  83 researched history of American Education with a particular focus on
  84 the transformation that has occured before our eyes in the last
  85 century. I am unsure if Gatto is entirely correct and not exaggerating
  86 anything; I have failed to find any negative criticisms, but it is not
  87 clear to me if that is because he is entirely correct or if no one
  88 cares enough to write a counterargument. I am in the process of
  89 tracking down as many of his sources as possible (a good number of
  90 them are out of print and not in the public domain yet), and will make
  91 an attempt to verify his argument over the course of the next year
  92 (that being 2007).
  93
  94 If he is correct then every one of us has had the first eighteen years
  95 of our lives stolen from us, and we have collectively suffered massive
  96 intellectual damage. My intuitions tell me he is correct (which is why
  97 I am driven to verify; I cannot trust myself because I *want* to
  98 believe) for my individuality and intelligence were nearly stolen from
  99 me. The only reason I survived relatively unscathed is because I
 100 became completely socially withdrawn for the last half of elementary
 101 school until late in high school due to the abuse I received at the
 102 hands of my peers creating a deep fear of social interaction in
 103 me. The downside is that I had the confidence crushed from my soul,
 104 but now that I have begun to regain it (the good that bicycling
 105 enabling me to stand straight and gradual realization of my own worth
 106 as a human have done) I would never trade the ability to think freely
 107 for the social skills I lack.
 108
 109 ** Philosophy
 110
 111 *** Chinese
 112
 113 **** Tao Te Ching
 114
 115 **** Confucianism
 116
 117 ***** The Analects
 118
 119 *** Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
 120
 121 I enjoyed reading this collection of meditations on Stoic
 122 philosophy. It is a fairly quick read; I read each of the twelve books
 123 before sleeping over the course of two weeks. Toward the end of the
 124 collection things get a bit topically repetetive (e.g. acting
 125 according to the nature of man is reflected upon over and over), but
 126 each repetition looks at the topic in a slightly different light. A
 127 number of passages I found quite inspiring, and scratched them down in
 128 my notebook to ponder further.
 129
 130 *** Søren Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death
 131
 132 I purchased this when I was looking through books at a store after
 133 being unable to find the book I really wanted, and I must say that it
 134 was better for me to have found this one.
 135
 136 Contained within is a beautiful analysis of despair in the context of
 137 Christianity (really theism in general). Even if the argument offends,
 138 the presentation cannot. The dialectical nature of despair is
 139 reflected in every aspect of the work, and the method of presentation
 140 forces reflection.
 141
 142 ** Politics
 143
 144 *** Thomas More - Utopia
 145
 146 I read most of Utopia in high school with the TI-89 ebook reader, but
 147 the way the book was split up made it a bit difficult to grasp the
 148 overall structure. I found a copy at a used book store one day, and so
 149 I read it again, and found it much more comprehensible. It is a quick
 150 read, and decent piece of literature. The interesting social system
 151 espoused resembles resembles state communism (even if perhaps as a
 152 negative ideal), but with an strange blend of 14th century European
 153 social customs.
 154
 155 ** Religion
 156
 157 *** [[William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience]]
 158
 159
 160 ** Technical
 161
 162 *** C J Date - Database in Depth
 163
 164 This was a complete waste of time. The author rants on for 180 pages
 165 and presents the information in a disorderly and shallow manner. It
 166 could be rewritten in about fifty pages and contain the same amount of
 167 information if it were organized properly and the off topic commentary
 168 were minimized.
 169
 170 *** Gregor Kiczales - The Art of the Metaobject Protocol
 171
 172 AMOP is useful as a reference to the CLOS MOP (although less so with
 173 the online MOP spec), but the true value of the book lies in the first
 174 half of the book. It presents the design of the CLOS MOP through a
 175 series of revisions that fix limitations of earlier implementations
 176 and gradually work toward a generic and well designed MOP for
 177 CLOS. Through that process one is made more aware of a few general
 178 object protocol design skills, and gains insight into how to cleanly
 179 make mapping decisions customizable.
 180
 181
 182 * Reports
 183
 184 ** [[http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006483.pdf][2003 National Assesement of Adult Literacy]]
 185
 186 A depressing view of American literacy rates. Literacy skills
 187 decreased across almost every population segment in the US between
 188 1993 and 2003; a mere 31% of college graduates are considered
 189 proficient in quantitative literacy (defined as being able to do
 190 things as terribly complicated as comparing two editorials).
 191
 192
 193 * Books That I Cannot Find
 194
 195 If you know anyone who has copies I'd appreciate an email. I'm willing
 196 to buy books for a reasonable cost, and for ones that are more than 25
 197 years old and out of print I am not opposed to *piracy* (no one is
 198 making money from them, and I feel that long copyrights are unethical
 199 and therefore feel no pangs of moral guilt).
 200
 201  - *Crystallizing Public Opinion* by Edward Bernays
 202    - A supposed classic in the field of public relations. Curiosity
 203      demands that I read the writings of the father of the field to
 204      better understand the way the international media works.
 205    - Another example of out of print books clearly having a market,
 206      but no publisher due to copyright (used copies go for nearly a
 207      thousand dollars in poor condition and hit five thousand or so
 208      for ones in good shape).
 209
 210 * Essays
 211 ** Computing
 212 *** Design
 213 **** [[http://deadhobosociety.com/index.php/Essays/ESSAY12][Confucianism and Technical Standards]]