--{
read00
}-----99---
98---
97---
i---
yes
- The Basic Eight, Daniel Handler
- It took me about eighty pages to get into this book, but once I was, I
was hooked. If I were Cruddy, then Rita (with whom I've lost
contact) would be The Basic Eight. A book about a too- smart- but-
still- popular- in- their- own- kind- of- way group of mostly girls.
With an amusing dark side. Handler's tone was perfect. The pop culture
references were annoying, though. The twist was great, though somewhat
anticipated. See the bottom of this page for an oblique
spoiler.1
- The Greatest! of! Marlys!, Lynda Barry
- Also good good good! I totally related to the funny stories about
weird family foods (I've told some of you in person about my dad and his
weird food experiments). And little, subtle references to her Filipino
heritage! I have to say, I'm not a fan of Barry's drawing style, but gosh
her stories are great. Justin doesn't like her kid schtick (figures), but
I do.
- The Freddie Stories, Lynda Barry
- Good good good! "Free Dog" almost made me cry.
- David Boring, Daniel Clowes
- Beautiful, melancholy story with retro-overtones and an apocalyptic
setting. Sort of Edward Hopper-ey. I'd forgotten how wonderful graphic
novels can be.
- The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace
- What an absolutely fabulous, funny, poignant, sweet, melancholy book.
Like I actually cared about all the characters, in a deep
three-dimensional kind of way. And I was amazed at how well some of the
overanalytical dialogue actually touched real life things. Like the idea
of love being a reversal. I was very sad when this book ended. I am in
awe of David Foster Wallace.
- The Verificationist, Donald Antrim
- Fun, though absolutely weird about the flying bit. Lots of
psychobabble, generally amusing, sometimes overdone, but a lot of it
quite amusing. I was craving pancakes throughout the book.
- The Gift of Stones, Jim Crace
- The end of the stone age. Crace is great for non-flowery, drily
observant prose. Makes you almost feel like you were there, learning the
craft of chipping flint, eating dumplings made with smashed fish roe and
bean paste. Minor problems, though, like the overuse of the words
"bracken" and "brackish" and weird inconsistentices in the prose. Stuff
that Crace's editor should have caught. Bad editor!
- The Good Times Are Killing Me, Lynda Barry
- Ooh! Lynda Barry is *still* good! This time, the memoirs of a kid
growing up in a multi-racial neighborhood. The kind of thing I wouldn't
read if I read the blurb but upon reading this I find it just amazing.
The greys and mottled blacks and whites (no pun intended) of American race
dynamics as seen through the eyes of a grungy little girl. I made Amy
borrow this immediately after I finished it, it's that good.
- Cruddy, Lynda Barry
- Wow, ooh, wow. Cruddy is *awesome*. Lynda Barry captures the voice
of a troubled-but-surprisingly-not-angstful adolescent. Two times: one of
"now," and one of the protagonist flashing back. You won't see this book
on Oprah lists. It's grotesque, violent, and funny. And it does the
amazing job of feeling female, but not girly-girl. I think Lynda Barry
might be the first female author whose style of writing (as opposed to
just their usual subject matter, as with Pat Califia or Jeanette Winterson
or Rita Mae Brown) that I actually really really dig. It's descriptive
and quirky and hard and springy all at once, much like miromi's page, which I browse. Like
miromi, Barry is a ziney comic artist. (Coincidentally, like miromi, Barry
is Filipino too. Though Barry is just part Filipino.) Must. See. More.
Of. Barry.
- Continent, Jim Crace
- Whew, even though it's out of print, I found it at a bookstore. In
DC, even. (I do not hide my preference for Boston and SF bookstores over
DC bookstores.) Crace's first book, I think. A bunch of short stories
set in an imaginary continent with some similarities to Australia and
South America. It feels like what Age of Wire and String would
feel like if Wire and String were to make direct narrative sense. Darker
than Crace's other books, but still very very good, though not quite as
good as I'd thought it would be from reading its description.
- Quarantine, Jim Crace
- So I'm not so much of a reader about religious events, but this was
great. Jesus's forty days in the desert, done in a way that you can't
tell what's divine, what's not, or even if there is anything divine in
there. And always, Crace's beautifully detached and simple descriptions.
- NO, Carl Djerassi
- Not the postmodernly constructed novels I usually read, though there's
a bit of egotistic self-referentiality thrown in (Djerassi the author
referring to Djerassi the scientist, Stanford professor, and inventor of
the birth control pill). Djerassi writes some very realistic fiction
about chemists (understandable because he is also Djerassi the scientist,
Stanford professor, and inventor of the birth control pill). He writes
about what he knows, and he knows a lot.
- His quintet (I think it is) comes together in this book, as various
characters from the past (Menachem's Seed, Cantor's Dilemma)
all get together to form a reproductive technologies startup. Very Bay
Area, chock full of dreamy and not-so-dreamy chemistry, and a smattering
of corporate stuff too. The legal coup scored by the protagonists is not
so realistic, but hey, there's already a lot to be admired in here. The
personal dynamics between the various scientists are amazingly (albeit a
teeny bit overdramatically) portrayed.
- The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Neal Pollack
- Hee.
- Wittgenstein's Mistress, David Markson
- Ooh! Good! I'm a bit biased here in saying it's good, though,
because what it's really like is, uh, like my personal diary entries. A
lot of disjointed, loosely connected sentences written by a possibly
insane woman who is the last person left on the planet. The sentences
cover whatever she happens to be thinking about during the day, which
usually happened to be various art things (like Greek poets, Expressionist
painters, etc.) The snippet-like meanderings made me feel very
comfortable.
- Eleven Short Stories, Luigi Pirandello
- A bunch of short stories, some fantastic, others not, all portrayals
of Italy as Pirandello saw it. For the last few nights, I read a short
story or two before I went to sleep--I dreamt of Italy every night. I
highly recommend that.
- How the Dead Live, Will Self
- Sometimes I have an idea for a book, and I want less to write the idea
than to read it. My obsession over the summer was for a book called
"Nervous Habits of the Dead." Will Self's book turned out to be JUST THAT
BOOK! Sure, different title, but Nervous Habits would have worked just as
well. It's gotten mixed reviews (the usual it's-mean-and-bilious
criticisms that come with Self's work), but it's EXACTLY WHAT I IMAGINED,
and gosh I just love it when that happens.
- Mean old woman, dies of cancer, moves to the outskirts of London.
Loosely based, apparently, on the Tibetan Books of the Dead. It's got a
map in the front.
- I was seduced by Will Self late in the game, apparently. Julie
Burchill, writing for the Guardian, has
gotten over him already. Her Big Will Self Crush, come and gone.
Mine, because I was turned on to him late in the game, oh, say the late
90's, is still churning along. He is amazing, and I mean *amazing*, with
his words, and writes with almost cool self-amusement. He's scathing.
And he has a HUGE NOSE. Yes yes, he's often offensive, and crosses my line
(oh, cross my line Will Self!). But I will continue to read everything he
puts out for awhile longer.
- The Werewolf Problem in Central Russia, Victor Pelevin
- Most of the stories, fun (Sleep, Vera Pavlovna's Ninth Dream).
Though some boring (like the Bulldozer's Day). But Prince of Gosplan, a
weird story of bureaucracies and computer games, was sheer brilliance.
Satirical and surreal at the same time.
- Being Dead, Jim Crace
- Who would've thunk it was possible to write such a sweet (in that dry
way that is the only way I can stand) story about a couple who were
robbed and killed? Now, the decaying bodies, from the eye of a naturalist.
Then, how they met. Later, the daughter. Really lovely. I even
cried a little bit. (Don't let that stop you from reading it, Dan.)
- Codex Seraphinianus, Luigi Serafini
- Okay, so I didn't really read this. But no one else has either!
Difficult to describe, other than as an encyclopedia of an imaginary
world, written in an imaginary script in an imaginary language.
Absolutely beautiful, and difficult to obtain. I saw this at Dan's house.
It is glorious and beautiful and neat, and I woke up in the middle of the
night just to crawl off the futon and peek at it some more. During the
day, Dan and I obsessed over the script for a little while, but
eventually got distracted by other books. I still think that making an
index of the words is the way to go.
- The art looks vaguely Hieronymous Boschey.
- Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Edogawa Rampo
- Quick fun mystery stories, all of them great except "The Worm", which
was kind of depressing. The short surprising twists one wants out of
mystery/thriller short stories, you know what I mean. An extremely quick
read.
- Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar
- Mmm, good stuff, maybe better because I can relate to the aimless
group of pseudo-intellectual internationals about whom Cortazar writes. Do
not admire it for its interesting use of narrative (because that's really
not so interesting); admire it for its characterization and its
philosophical discussions.
- Music, in a Foreign Language, Andrew Crumey
- The multi-leveled nature of this book is amazing. The main "plot" is
that of book that the narrator is writing, but that plot itself is tied in
with the narrator's own life. 1984-ish, but with
Rashamon-ey qualities.
- Here's the weird deal. Jonathan Coe reviews a lot of Crumey's stuff.
Loves it. And I'm in agreement with that. But I don't much like Jonathan
Coe. I suppose that happens. I just find it weird.
- Shadows on the Hudson, Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Not the type of book I would ordinarily read because of its dramatic
nature, but I read it out of desperation for lack of other English
language books here. Don't let my tastes affect your judgment of the
quality of the book, though. It's good, and sprawling. An interconnected
Jewish community in New York, right after the war, dealing with cultural
(non)adjustment. There are aspects of this that remind me of my parents,
and how they deal with America. And then there are things I cannot relate
to, the presence of a religious structure. It's kind of depressing, the
disfunctionality of it all. But really well-written.
- Monkey Brain Sushi, edited by Alfred Birnbaum
- A collection of Japanese short stories from the late 1980s/early
1990s. This should actually go under my category of "maybe", but I'm
putting it here because it contains "Christopher Columbus Discovers
America" by Gen'ichiro Takahashi. Takahashi, supposedly the king of
Japanese meta-fiction, is awesome. Or at least this story is; it's the
only one of his I've found in English. But god, wow. It has funny bits
about how to find America by following certain routes from coffeeshops. It
has maps. It has this guy who tries to go from a certain coffeeshop
in a hotel and accidentally ends up in China instead. "But at least here
in China," the guy says, in his letter to the narrator, "they pay people
salaries to look for America. They call it 'modernization.'"
- "Mazelife", by Kyoji Kobayashi, is also pretty good. And so is "TV
People" by Haruki Murakami, but I think you can find that in
Elephant.
- Some of the stories (like "Peony Snowflakes of Love", by Osamu
Hashimoto" and "Kneel Down and Lick My Feet", by Amy Yamada) seem included
in this collection because they deal with topics nontraditional to
Japanese literature (a lesbian take on the traditional truckdriver romance
story, and a description of Japanese S&M work, respectively). Others
("Japanese Entrance Exams for Earnest Young Men" by Yoshinori Shimizu and
"The Yamada Diary" by Masado Takemi) seem included because they humorously
portray aspects of modern Japanese life (entrance exams and videogaming,
respectively). They are not all that amazing, quality-wise, but they are
interesting if you look at them as representatives of certain literature
types.
- 62: A Model Kit, Julio Cortazar
- This book is incredible. Full of the intellectual ponderings that I
love to read. And poignant about the things that are poignant that I often
do not like to read about, lingering loves and obsessions and all that,
but in a way that I do like to read about. God, wow. Drifts seamlessly
from the first person of one character to third person to the first person
of another character. You wouldn't believe the elegant bed scenes he
creates this way.
- I repeat to you the quote from Pablo Neruda: "Anyone who doesn't read
Cortazar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which
in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has
never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder...and, probably,
little by little, he would lose his hair."
- This book also made me crave yerba mate like you wouldn't believe.
And such a craving was impossible to fulfill in Japan.
- By the way, a few of you (Dan, Fonda, Justin) would probably
recognize an additional reason why this book especially struck me.
- Pfitz, Andrew Crumey
- Very quick read, but totally enjoyable. Fictional city, written by
teams of people. Scarily, it reminded me of the whole process of writing
assassins games. Or at least what I thought the process should be like at
the time. I think we only approached my literary ideal in Epilogue, and
then the actual game playing of it all fucked it all up, but still.
Anyway, I'm gonna email Harry and tell him to read this. I haven't
thought about those games positively in a long long while.
- Tough Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys, Will Self
- Will Self is my author equivalent of the mean bad boy that is
invariably seductive but you hate nevertheless. Not that he's a
bad boy compared to all authors in general,(*) but he is compared to the
other authors I read. Will Self is mean. Will Self makes nasty
generalizations about people. Will Self isn't even all that consistent. I
wonder why I keep coming back to him. But then I get to stories like
"Caring, Sharing" (about inner children, come to life, in fifteen-foot
tall size) and I think "gee, I guess he can be sweet." Argh. STOP TOYING
WITH ME WILL SELF!!!
- (*) Oops, after stalking Will Self through web sources, I guess he is
that much of a bad boy compared to all authors in general.
- The Age of Wire and String, Ben Marcus
- Wow. I'd seen Ben Marcus over and over on random web pages I'd read.
I wish I'd read him earlier. Not much to say but wow. Beautiful like the
instruction manuals in Cortazar's Cronopios and Famas, but
different.
- Conspiracy of Paper, David Liss
- I'm not even going to pretend this was a deep book. But by all
accounts, it's fairly accurate (historically, that is) historical
detective fiction, and enjoyable to read, at that. No real tension,
though. But I didn't predict the twists. Though you might.
Nevertheless, the description is marvelous, and I enjoyed the backdrop of
the beginnings of the stock market before the South Sea Bubble Affair, as
well as the description of Jewish culture in London at the time.
- Miramax has the rights, apparently.
- Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami
- The translation of an early novel of Murakami's, mailed to me from
Taiwan by Jen. She warned that it had dated language, but it wasn't
nearly as bad as Norwegian Wood. I really enjoyed Hear the Wind
Sing--had the short sweetness of an author's early work, not tight,
but not stumbly. Little niblets, seemingly, from Murakami's own life.
Self-referential, but not in the way of our postmodern 90s writer
self-referential. Self-referential in the way of a guy telling you the
story of his life at a bar between bites of honey roasted peanuts
self-referential.
- Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace
- (When I get busy, it's much easier for me to read short stories.)
Great stuff. Disturbing portrayals of inner ugliness interspersed between
other experimental shorts. "The Depressed Person" was hilarious.
- Slab Rat, Ted Heller
- This is a book I've read and seen before. This is Americana,
this is Swimming with Sharks. This, nevertheless, is still fun. Every
now and then, it's rejuvenating to read about a bunch of angry people
ripping each other to shreds in the workplace. Especially when the
workplace is the entertainment industry. Maybe because that
industry is so different from mine (law), the vicarious pleasure is
extra-enjoyable.
- Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem
- I wish I'd read Oliver Sacks more recently; it's been awhile since
I've read Sacks' writings about Tourettes. Still, Lethem's
characterization *felt* right. But then, that's how urban myths get
started, eh? It certainly allows for some very deft wordplay. The book
gets Murakami-ish towards the end, in the way the resolution comes
hastily, and not entirely attached to the development of the narrator's
character.
- One jarring problem. When Lethem describes uni, or sea
urchins, he's wrong. I think he mixed up uni with ikura, or
salmon roe, which look more like the "gelatinous balls" he describes. I'm
usually not one for nitpicking; I just get wrought up about food.
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
- Wow. This book epitomizes books that appeal to Me and My Kind.
Self-referential, self-reflective, self-conscious, self-effacing,
self-aware, meta-everything. Eggers parries accusations that exist and
haven't existed but will exist. Eggers narrates while preempting. I
know, none of this makes any sense unless you read it. You should enjoy.
- The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Will Self
- Much better than the other Will Self book I'd read, Grey
Matter. Interestingly enough, it was actually more conventional. But
I thought it was better written, with amusing asides into experimental set
up, etc. Nicely interwoven. I'm on a big interwoven short stories kick.
Recommend me more. (But not Manhattan Transfer. For some reason
I'm not getting through that.)
maybe
- House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
- I liked the parts about the house, didn't like the meta story that sat
on top of the story about the house. Nice try, though.
- Mr. Palomar, Italo Calvino
- Mr. Palomar, incredibly introspective. In such a way that his life is
abstracted, completely. I do not think I am that introspective, but it
makes me worried. This worry makes me uncomfortable. Ergo, this book has
made me uncomfortable.
- Cyrano De Bergerac, Edmond Rostand
- About four people in the world other than me know why I read this
book. Okay, I've read it. Not amazing, but good to know in order
to do the thing I want to do. I see why it's an oft-told story, though.
- Love in a Dead Language, Lee Siegel
- Eh, this book tried too hard to be a postmodern Pale Fire/Lolita. And
it creeped me out--it seemed to make fun of the whole white- male-
exotifying- Asian- female- thing, but sometimes its spoofery (if it was
spoofery) was just too real. Eww.
- Late-breaking note! Weird coincidence, the authors of one of my
sources for this paper I'm writing is named Lee Siegel. That's why
I had a nagging feeling of familiarity throughout reading this book.
- Plainsong, Kent Haruf
- Well written, with good portrayals of the small town characters.
Their dialogue was perfect; I could hear their voices in my ears.
Problem: it's just not the kind of story I get so into. Heartbreak. Kids
growing up. Heifers and stuff. Babies. Oh well.
- Under the Jaguar Sun, Italo Calvino
- Three nice stories about the senses (taste, sound, smell--Calvino died
before he completed all five), but not amazing. Relatively creepy for
Calvino--bits of the first story, "Under the Jaguar Sun", reminded me
almost of Lovecraft in its sultry horror-elementiness.
- Buddha's Little Finger, Victor Pelevin
- Not as good as I thought it would be! Okay, so the Amazon review said
it was difficult to follow, that the narrative hopped a lot. But it
wasn't so difficult to follow! Am I the only one who's jaded about books
in which the narrator may or may not be in a mental institution and who
may or may not be living an alternate life?
- Timbuktu, Paul Auster
- I should like this because it has a dog I should like this because it
has a dog I should like this because it has a dog. No, I didn't like this
so much. I mean, it was a fine entertaining read, but it drifted off
towards the end and not really all that interestingly.
- The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald
- Just kind of eh. Not horrible, but not great either. The morose
journey of a German (I think) guy around England. Lots of decaying
landscapes and mansions. Only quasi-nonfiction, but if I put A
Supposedly Fun Thing in this section, I might as well put Rings of
Saturn here as well.
- D'Alembert's Principle, Andrew Crumey
- I didn't like this as much as the other Crumey books. The poor pining
ignorant mathematician, the chattery salon ladies, all would have been
fine if only the story weren't so, well, whiny. Oh well.
- The Death of Artemio Cruz, Carlos Fuentes
- I read this because it promised an interesting narrative structure
(first, second, and third persons). Instead it was a jumbled mess, but I
could see that it was intentionally so, because it was supposed to invoke
the jumbled thoughts of Artemio Cruz as he lay dying. The whole story
is one of those time-tested stories of once-idealistic men, grown weary
and corrupt and rich over time. Eh. But there are good parts, like the
section in which he thinks about what could have been, told in the form of
"you will . . . ."
- Inter Ice Age 4, Kobo Abe
- Well, that was no good. Starts out like a PKD sci fi thriller (the
kind you could see being made on big screen, with the ending changed to be
happier than when written), ends up trailing off. Not one of Abe's bests.
- The House of Sleep, Jonathan Coe
- Eh, not so great. I mean, not so bad that I hated it, and it had some
amusing parts, but all in all, it seemed like it was trying too hard to be
narratively-interesting, but wasn't. And I didn't sympathize with any of
the characters, either. And they didn't particularly feel real, or
capture my imagination. Oh well. The sleep research angle would have
been cool, except I've read too much about that already. And the
interlocking stories interlocked just too well.
no
- Ghostwritten, David Mitchell
- I did not enjoy this, even though I admired bits of it. I admired how
when the chapter was in Japan, Mitchell sounded vaguely Murakami-ish, and
I admired how when the chapter was in Russia, Mitchell sounded vaguely
Pelevin-ish. But then I got annoyed because I couldn't figure out whether
he did it on purpose, or accidentally in a crude imitative manner. And
then I got annoyed at having to ponder, secondarily, over whether I think
that's a good thing or a bad thing. And I marvelled at how I didn't enjoy
it, because it has one big quality that I usually enjoy--it featured
something that I thought would be fun to write. Like all last fall, I
thought it'd be fun to write a bunch of interconnecting short stories,
each focused on a person, each interconnecting primarily with the person
from the last chapter, but only in a very tangential manner.
Ghostwritten did exactly that. Yet the stories were ponderous. I
did not care about them. I wanted them to get it over with. (Except for
the old woman on the mountain. I liked her.) Weird. Oh, and sorry Dan.
I always feel guilty borrowing a book and then not liking it.
- Plowing the Dark, Richard Powers
- Am I the only one who thinks that virtual reality just isn't so
fascinating? This book. Virtual reality. I just can't elevate it in my
mind beyond videogames and holodecks. I mean, Powers was onto
something when he referred to how, when we moved from text to
graphics adventures, we lost a bit of open-endedness. I wish he'd taken
that idea further. Because the book, the book instead seemed to revere
the boring.
- Plus, something about the software and hardware experts at the company
just didn't feel real. Like how an outsider imagines hackers talk. (Not
that I think I'm an insider.) When I came across "Multi User Dimension,"
I knew it wasn't just me. It's DUNGEON, dammit. (Okay, a google search
reveals that there are a few references to dimension, rather than dungeon,
but **dungeon** is STILL the usual term.)
- Oh, and, after hearing people describe what they like about Seattle, I
think I would hate Seattle. Sure, there's coffee. There's
environmentalists. But there's a weird dot commy middle class fakery
about it all that I think I couldn't abide. (Yeah, I know, there's a
middle classness about Cambridge, too, and I love Cambridge, but the
difference is that what I like about Cambridge is its academia, and I
don't mind middle class academia, but I hate middle class
environmentalism.)
- The Fencing Master, Arturo Perez-Reverte
- Well that sucked. I mean, I expected schlock, but I didn't expect
boring schlock. I suppose it might not have sucked as badly if this
was the first Perez-Reverte book I'd read, but it wasn't. Instead, I
found this tediously similar to his other books.
poetry
- The Collected Poems, 1957-1982, Wendell Berry
- Great poetry, some of which I made into cards.
Heartfelt (but not sappy) stuff, connected to the land, to people, to
locale.
essays and rants
- The Land That Could Be, William A. Shutkin
- Four case studies of successes in civic environmentalism: Boston, New
Jersey, Oakland, and Routt County, Colorado. The book tackles the very
dilemmas within the environmental movement that I'm grappling with now in
deciding What I Want To Do With My Life. It's a good book, or maybe it
isn't. Maybe it's just that I've been reading law for too long and
have forgotten that there's other stuff out there that ties environmental
conceptions of the world together much better than law can hope to
provide. This book is a good reminder for me. Anyway, this book gets its
own page of discussion.
- The Reed Reader, Ishmael Reed
- Lesson: Excerpts of novels taken out of context are difficult to
read.
- However, once you skip the novel-excerpt section, the book was great.
Definitely
ranty, definitely not all stuff I agree with. But interesting discussions
of race and
gender in America. Guy has issues with white feminists, definitely. But
then, so do I.
- A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster
Wallace
- Loved the essays about the state fairs, the cruise, and David Lynch.
I was somewhat lost in the tennis essay, but amazingly enough, DFW kept my
attention. Even though I know absolutely nothing about tennis, and don't
intend to learn unless tennis knowledge is fed to me again in the really
enjoyable way it was done here.
- Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler, Joe Queenan
- Hilarious diatribes against the Titanic, artsy movies, and Babs.
Spent the day reading this over coffee at a diner and laughing. Waiter
thought I was strange.
nonfiction
- The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester
- Just like Island of Lost Maps, only less poetic. It's again
not so good, without the bonus part that I liked about Island.
However, I learned a lot of stuff I never knew about the Oxford English
Dictionary, including how they filed little quotes for words
everywhere. Wish I was there, filing. I take a weird pathetic pleasure
in filing.
- The Island of Lost Maps, Miles Harvey
- If I really look at it critically, it's not so good. The author never
really gets inside Gilbert Bland, the man who stole all the maps. He
wanders all over the place. And much of what he said was speculative.
But in the sense that sometimes it's nice to read a book that's a
tribute, a book whose story is just a vehicle to express the author's love
and adoration of a certain thing, this book was wonderful. And it has
also given me something crucial for what I need for that thing I'm working
on.
- Legal Alchemy, Daniel Faigman
- Hey! Great stuff! Faigman is now right up there with Jasanoff and
Goldberg in my list of favorite law and science authors. (I don't agree
with Huber much.) He has good arguments about the place for science in
the law, and goes through several areas. It's readable and fun even for
non-lawyers/non-law students.
- Nonzero, Robert Wright
- I'd hoped this would be better, but it wasn't. I like pop social
evolution analysis as much as the next gal, but this was way too broad,
way too generalist. The thesis of this book is that, yes, there is a
progression towards more complex societies and life forms because nested
non-zero sum games create incentives (albeit not always consistent) for
complex evolution. The author didn't present a convincing enough
argument, even for someone who wanted to be convinced.
- The cover of the book, though, is really pretty.
- Transformations, Bruce Ackerman
- Not so great, but maybe because I'm, at heart, not a historian. I
like historical analyses only because I like to see patterns. This book
did not provide that. Not as much as I'd expected. Oh well.
1. Combine Fight Club and Heathers and you have this book.