book-list.lisp

   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   nil
  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   nil
  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   nil
  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   nil
 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   nil
 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   nil
 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* in the negative form. The final chapters are very
 179 important (not to detract from the value of the rest of the work) if
 180 one wishes to understand *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.")
 187   ("Ecce Homo"
 188    :nonfiction 7
 189    "*Ecce Homo* is Nietzsche's very strange autobiography and
 190 explanation of his own works. At points it is clear that it could have
 191 used a bit more editing (prevented by Nietzsche ... falling into a
 192 catatonic state and all), but is still a very useful book to read as
 193 Nietzsche explains the overall structure of his works.")))