Marcus

Brand is really, really good at going on long, semi-eloquent polemical rants. There's really not a ton of substance here, but it's a fun read and sometimes even thought provoking.

I haven't seen the movie and don't plan on it, but the book is great. Before reading it, I didn't know much about it except that it was “crazy” and apparently something that teens read in High School then immediately put down and go out and either form a punk band or get a tattoo or dedicate their life to writing. Generally books with that reputation (On The Road, Atlas Shrugged, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance etc.) just don't appeal to me that much (OK so I liked Atlas Shrugged as well). Despite the reputation, A Clockwork Orange was absolutely worth the read. I might even dedicate my life to writing.

The audio version I listened to was narrated by Tom Hollander, my new favorite narrator. His performance is flawless. At the end of the Audible version there are a few sample chapters narrated by Burgess himself but not even he can hold a candle to Hollander's performance. It is wonderful.

I didn't, for better or for worse, find the ultraviolence as offensive as its reputation suggested. Maybe it's because just I'm coming off reading Lolita, or maybe it's because the violence in ACO, while the acts are horrendous, is not described explicitly . Whatever the reason, it didn't seem all that controversial to me.

The main philosophical issue is interesting: the merit and humanity of doing good of free will versus being compelled to do good. Looking into the mind of a kid who feels absolutely no desire to do good and no remorse for doing bad is disturbing and intriguing as well– Alex is not your typical protagonist. There are some beautiful descriptions of music and at the end some fairly touching moments. Still though, my favorite parts weren't the story or the philosophy, they were, like, the language and dialog, oh my brothers.

This was a fun book–it's a really approachable take on some of the fun as well as some more serious topics in astronomy and astrophysics. It doesn't assume any prior knowledge of physics yet still manages to get into enough detail to stretch your knowledge a little.

There also is some interesting commentary on the way astrophysics is covered in the press and in politics as well as how to approach learning astrophysics. I enjoyed it.

Bleak. Very reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, except with simple, precise language. A coming of age story that is almost, but not entirely, hopeless.

The main gist of this book is that it's better to be aware of what you're doing and avoid the automatic categorizing of situations and people that your mind naturally does when making decisions for yourself or when dealing with others. There are also sections on learned helplessness, especially in the context of old age, creativity and workplace efficiency.

While it's interesting how many of her original studies have gone on to be included in other books over the years, the content of this book lacks a certain oomph. The content is solid, but the presentation is not nearly as compelling as other, more broad-reaching, books on positive psychology.

One interesting study she includes in her section on the placebo affect, that I had never heard of, is the use of hypnosis for wart removal. Apparently it works... you're hypnotized, told that you should cure yourself of warts and 9 times out of 14 the warts go away. Not that I would ever need it, of course.

The Road to Serfdom is not an anti-government book, it's definitely not a libertarian or pro-laissez-faire capitalism or even a pro-democracy book. It's purely and simply an anti-socialism book. And, just to be clear, to Hayek, socialism primarily means central-planning. It's chapter after chapter of reasons why socialism, despite it's apparently noble goals, both will not work in the practical sense, and how it tends to lead to totalitarianism.

Hayek's arguments are level-headed and logical. He is careful not to insult his opponent and goes out of his way to point out their good intentions.

Despite the fact that The Road to Serfdom is currently being championed by conservatives, Hayek calls himself a liberal and the book is written with fellow liberals in mind. There is no contradiction. Definitions, especially in the world of politics, have a way of changing. For Hayek liberalism was tantamount to freedom and liberty. Today the definition of the world “liberal” has shifted. In economics, liberalism is now a synonym for equality, and significantly, not equal freedom for all, but rather equal, or at least more equal, distribution of resources.

In a time when on one hand the accusation of socialism is bandied about as a slur and on the other there is a strong anti-capitalist movement that champions the same socialism, it's useful to understand not only what socialism really is, but what the implications for society are. They might not be what you think.

I started this book hoping to get a basic understanding of the Theory of Relativity. I got that, and much, much more. I can't remember ever having read an author as talented at distilling and simplifying the complex as Brian Greene. He is great at using metaphor, repetition and illustrations to explain exotic, intertwined subjects.

I'm really pleased at how far he was able to take me without requiring me to use math or learn equations. I appreciate the fact that I'd have a deeper understanding of the theory if I learned the math, but my goal isn't to become a cosmologist, it's to get a basic understand of what cosmologists are doing. I was also pleased at how he is always careful to distinguish untested or disputed theories from generally accepted science.

Some of the parts that stand out as especially interesting to me were the discussions of entropy and the laws of thermodynamics, the Theory and Special Theories of Relativity. Why dark matter matters and what it potentially is. What gravity actually is, what the Higgs ocean is (if it exists). How quantum mechanics and quantum uncertainty work and what the implications are. He explains what we know about black holes and why a knowledge of them is so important as well as what string theory, super-string theory and M-theory are and the shortcomings and alternatives to those theories.

The final chapters are on the frontiers of science and talk about things like whether time and can be broken into discreet, indivisible units and why that would matter. He also discusses the possibilities of teleportation and time travel into the past or future. After reading that far, It feels great to actually understand some of the theory behind the discussion from the previous sections of the book. Greene's excitement for physics is contagious. He is unabashedly enthusiastic and is always careful to point out, in a non-patronizing way, when and why you should be excited about a particular point.

Also, check out Joe's review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4161050

Once I started reading I couldn't turn away. The story of Scientology has it all–good and evil, drugs and violence and a cast of characters and organizations that put any dystopian fiction to shame. If it wasn't so awful that real people get wrapped up in this, it'd make a great movie or tv series.

Scientology's “auditing” process is flat out scary. It makes such a strong appeal to the libido dominandi, the lust for power, that people seem willing to overlook all other aspects of the doctrines and history of the religion. You are promised that if you learn, and of course pay for, enough tech you will eventually become a powerful enough Thetan to do anything. Levitate stuff, control people, whatever.

Fine. We all know that no amount of auditing is going to get you lifting plates out of the dishwasher without getting off the couch, but apparently (and most dangerously) auditing has enough of a kernel of truth to it to convince people to keep going with it.

Eventually you become so enmeshed that it is difficult to leave the ‘church' without losing friends, the significant financial investment you've made and all ties a culture that has changed almost every aspect of your lifestyle, your vocabulary not being the least of it.

I doubt that Scientology is a net loss for everyone that gets involved, but it seems a lot like cocaine. There are apparently a few people that use it and never get addicted, they just enjoy the highs, but it's not something you'd ever give your kids to see if they're one of those people.

I really like Gaiman's writing style. It flows and doesn't seem forced, there are a ton of interesting references to history and it's obvious he's done his homework about the geography and period of the setting. Apart from that, the story is great. It's creative and moves quickly and even though it's about a little kid, usually I'm not a fan of stories about kids, it kept me entertained all the way through. I thought the ending was a little less than fantastic. The plot line would probably look more like a hill than the mountain you hope for in escapist literature. Still, it was definitely worth reading.

What a painful book. Charles, the protagonist, is an average guy who gets lucky (so he thinks) and marries a beautiful woman. He loves her and does everything he knows to make her happy and gets for his efforts, instead of anything like reciprocal affection, shafted in ways made me cringe and hesitate to even keep reading. Despite his best intentions he is an inescapably unexciting man, incapable of being ever enough for Emma. Regardless of his flaws, nobody deserves the fate he suffers.

Emma's complete self-centeredness is appalling. She's the train wreck that you can't look away from. She's passionate, flighty, erotic and materialistic. She hates the mediocre towns and the mediocre people she is surrounded by. She constantly strives to appear to be more than she is. She never hesitates to to justify her depravity and make herself the victim or to willfully postpone and ignore the consequences of her actions. Even in suffering she is irredeemable. Emma must inspire at least a little fear and a little desire in every man's heart, especially in those of men married to beautiful women.

As much as I enjoyed it, if I had read Madame Bovary before reading Anna Karenina, I would have probably appreciated Madame Bovary more. Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina after Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary, and there is speculation that Tolstoy had read Madame Bovary and was possibly influenced by it. Maybe that was the case, even so, I still found Anna Karenina to be the more dynamic and masterful work.

In Anna Karenina there were so many more fully developed characters–Kitty, Karenin, Levin, Nikolai etc. By contrast, in Madame Bovary we really only know Charles and Emma, and to a much smaller degree, the chemist and Emma's lovers. Flaubert takes a depressing, Hobbesian view of human nature and while he masterfully captures the mind of an adulteress, Tolstoy is the king of encompassing in his work not only a large range of human nature and experience, but also a much more redemptive view of humanity.

It's impressive that someone had the cojones to go over to Somalia and interview these guys, and it was nice learning some about the geo-political system of the “country,” in the end though, it felt like the book could have been condensed to an article without losing too much. It turns out that the Somali pirates really aren't that interesting when it comes down to it. They hijack ships and use drugs a lot. I'm bailing on this one after about 1/4 of the book read and skimming bits of the rest.

There is a point in the expanding universe where things are moving away from us at the speed of light. Since nothing can exceed the speed of light, we can know nothing of what lies beyond that point. Not only that, but any currently known object that speeds beyond that horizon is lost to us forever. The only other way an object in space can disappear forever is by being sucked into the strangest type of star, a black hole. This second way of vanishing is the topic of controversy in Susskind's Black Hole War. Is something really completely lost when it goes into a black hole? Does it matter? Stephen Hawking (the other side in the “war”) believed the radiation that escapes from black holes is entirely uniform, devoid of information, and that once something crossed the horizon of a black hole, it was truly lost. Susskind, and a few others believed this theory of information loss was so dangerous that it undermined and threatened all we think we know about post-newtonian physics.

Not to spoil the ending, but as you might expect, Susskind won. Information isn't annihilated in black holes and the laws of physics prevail. But in Black Hole War, the journey is the show. In the battles on the way to discovering how black holes work, there is plenty to appreciate. For example, the holographic principle which says that the amount of information that can be contained in an area of space is equal to the amount of information that can be encoded in its perimeter. So if I take a sphere of space, maybe the one that includes your house and computer and you, I can know everything about what is in that sphere based solely on the information found on the outside of the sphere. It's weird. It's counter-intuitive I still don't really get it. Strange as it is, having fairly solid evidence of its truth was so important that was after Juan Maldacena, an Argentine physicist, showed strong evidence for it, a version of the song Macarena was written for him by another physicist, Dr. Jeffrey Harvey, and performed at a conference. Here's the last verse:

M-theory is finishedJuan has great repute The black hole we have mastered Q.C.D. we can compute Too bad the glueball spectrum is still in some disputeEhhhh! Maldacena!

Black Hole War

When I started this, I planned on reading it this year then waiting a couple years and reading War and Remembrance. Instead, I just bought the second book and I'm starting it immediately. Wouk is a great storyteller. He has an amazing grasp on WWII and is easy to read and understand. His characters can be a little flat, and there are times where their story lines are predictable, but alongside the overall excellence of the book, those are minor complaints. If you're interested in WWII, but feel like you could brush up on the chronology and major events, read this book.

I'm pretty much burnt out on this series, but Max (8) still loves it, and so we continue reading. I suppose it has it's charms and there are a few tense(ish) moments and twists of fate and whatnot, but it won't go down in history as a one of the greats.

He's a fascinating guy but unfortunately a terrible writer. I'd love to read a bio by someone who could get more from depth from him through good interviews.

On one hand, Hancock is an iconoclast that is anxious to move archeology forward and make bold claims that, if proven true, would uproot much of what we take for granted about the history of modern humans. He is tireless in his search for evidence to back up his theory of a massively disruptive comet hitting the Earth about twelve thousand years ago. Much of what he finds is very convincing. He's creative and methodical and draws from many experts to back him up.

On the other hand though, he has a parallel theory that a meteor will return and hit the Earth sometime around 2040. He bases this on a variety of markers left by cultures around the world. The way he describes the evidence and the event is intriguing, but ultimately not very scientific.

I think this should be two books, a serious scientific book with shows evidence for a meteor hitting the Earth twelve thousand years ago, the societies that may have existed before then, and their influence on the post-catastrophe world. The second book would be could be a more speculative description of the return of the meteor in the near future. This second book would probably be less convincing but still interesting in a Nicolas Cage sort of way.

Magicians of the Gods is definitely worth reading. You'll learn a lot about some interesting archeological sites. The writing is very engaging and there is probably a lot here that will eventually make its way into the mainstream.

A lot of why I liked this book is because it gave me a few books to add to my queue. This is my first exposure to Bloom and my impression is that he's sort of a charming character. He's erudite and opinionated without being condescending or abrasive. I found his passion for books and literature contagious and criticism insightful. After reading this, I've started Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and I'll probably read Blood Meridian after that. How to Read and Why gave me a new, or renewed, appreciation for memorizing poetry and by 2030 I'll probably have successfully committed Tom o'Bedlam to memory. Bloom also strengthened my resolve to read more Shakespeare and introduced me to Turgenev, a Russian I really look forward to reading.

I was pretty skeptical at first, but after reading it, I'd consider the book a success. It's helpful at understanding why literature is so important and is a great introduction and primer on how to read some of the world's best works.

Long before the the Civil War started, Lysander Spooner was a strong abolitionist and was extremely active in supporting efforts to free the slaves. Despite this, when war broke out, he strongly opposed it. Spooner contended that the Civil War was less about freeing the slaves than it was about maintaining the union. For him, keeping the South in the union meant violently forcing a large group of people (the Southerners) to be subjected by a government to which they no longer consented.

No Treason was written in 1867, shortly after the Civil War. It is in that context that Spooner uses such strong language when he refers to the government as “robbers and murders” (he uses the phrase, or some variation on it, 38 times in the pamphlet). From his perspective, the government of the United States had just killed hundreds of thousands of men who were defending their right to be governed by consent. The result of this bloodshed was that while the slaves were freed, the surviving Southerners were no longer free to withdraw from the bonds of a government that no longer acted as their agent. Again, Spooner was anti-slavery and at times even advocated using violence to end slavery, but he felt the motivation for the war was not freeing the slaves, but the preservation of the union (and consequential suppression of the South) and that the principal reason for conserving the union was greed.

Not content to simply denounce the government's use of violence to force the Southerners to stay in the United States, Spooner also attacks the authority of the constitution. How can a document that nobody has signed or voted for maintain authority over anyone? He argues that a social contract like the Constitution, one that is not explicitly agreed to like every other contract which must be signed, cannot be binding. One way to think of it is to ask yourself–if you were born into a country with an extremely repressive constitution would you accept its authority to oppress you solely by virtue of your being born into the geographical area over which the constitution claimed to exert authority? Essentially that is what happens with the US constitution, only because it is not considered repressive by most, its authority is generally accepted on these nebulous grounds.

Spooner addresses the position that the constitution (and government) is authoritative because the votes of the majority support it by questioning how elections held by secret ballot can pretend to have any power over a person's life and property. He poses it as a group of men (at this time only men could vote) that gather, and by secret ballot vote to rob and plunder (through taxation and the threat of violence for resisting taxation) their fellow man for their own benefit.

Spooner's logic is complex and deals with many of the nuances of voting for a document and agents (congressmen etc.) to exercise the authority of the document. No Treason is tough reading, not because the it is hard to follow, but because for most people, myself included, the content is jarring, hard to refute, and goes against a lifetime of beliefs. Whether or not he is right is a decision that the reader will have to make, but either way, his arguments should not be ignored. They are just as relevant today as they were more than 140 years ago when he made them.

Before reading Flash Boys, I was only marginally aware of High Frequency Trading and had only a vague notion of what it was. Michael Lewis sheds a lot of light on how it works and who it benefits (hint: not you) and apparently, I wasn't the only one who was in the dark. HFT is usually portrayed as being a net win for the markets because it provides liquidity. That turns out to be far from the truth. Not only is the liquidity provided by HFT a false liquidity that benefits no one, it turns out it's just a way to take advantage of having faster access to market data to essentially skim from “normal” market activity. It's guys with faster connections and privileged access to market data taking your money when you trade while providing you zero benefit whatsoever in return.

You pretty much have to have faith that based on his reputation, Lewis is getting his facts straight since it obviously behooves the HFT traders to obfuscate what they're doing. If he's getting it right though, then there's a lot of crap going down that should shake your faith in the good intentions of majority of stock brokers. Fortunately there is a hint of optimism throughout the book and signs that things are changing, but the situation he describes so well is very much still happening today.

This book and the first volume should not be missed, especially with the political climate today. If you liked Clash of Civilizations or Guns, Germs, & Steel, this is along the same lines but much better.

This is one of the best books on mastery that I've come across. It's much more than a bunch of summaries of studies and books on practice, it's the wisdom of some amazing teachers who spent a lot of time actually learning and teaching others how to master their fields. Most of the examples in the book are geared toward teaching teachers how to perform, however the techniques are easily applied to any field or endeavor.

The passion for learning the authors bring to the subject is palpable and the presentation is excellent. Also, don't be put off by the “42 Rules” in the title, this a rare exception to the rule that articles and books based on enumerated lists are no good.

Nozick's musings in Examined Life are varied and interesting. His political leanings after a lifetime of philosophizing are much less brash than the ideas in his earlier work, Anarchy, State and Utopia. He no longer espouses anarcho-capitalism, and arguably not even libertarianism, making this, for better or for worse, the less shocking of the two books.

The other essays on non-political topics are interesting and occasionally enlightening, but not consistently enough to have me reaching for the book in my spare moments. Still, there's a lot of wisdom here and his approach to solving problems is fascinating. I'm shelving it for now but I'm sure I'll come back to it in the future.

Well, I probably could have learned a decent amount of French in the time it took me to read this, but I don't regret the distraction. Flirting With French is a fun story of a late-middle-aged guy who takes on picking up French as a serious hobby. There are great tangents on linguistics, travel, food and his health that keep the story interesting and personal.

I really enjoyed this book. In a world where most geographical frontiers have already been explored it's inspiring to read about the wild west of science where our knowledge is small and great discoveries are still to be made.

The author did a good job of interweaving the 13 things so the book felt like a single work and not 13 distinct essays. There are interesting humans elements to the book. It's fascinating how the careers of so many scientists were affected by their ‘discoveries.' The final chapter on homeopathy, the one I almost skipped because the topic seemed like an open-and-shut case, surprisingly turned out to be the most interesting. I also really enjoyed the discussion on dark matter and the way that single topic was interwoven throughout the book.

I expected the primary purpose of this book to be to point out patterns and obscure references and clarify the more difficult passages in Ulysses. To some degree, it does, but it's actually closer to Cliff's Notes in that the primary purpose seems to be to summarize the book. For some chapters of Ulysses I found that to be pretty useful, for others, unnecessary.