Books I would like to share
Recently Completed
How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom
by: Garry Kasparov
Garry extends his chess strategies to real life...generalizing knowlege is part of the greatness of the human intellect. Why not practice it?
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This was a NYTimes Bestseller, in which Nassim outlines his observations about randomness and how woefully deficient we are in anticipating unexpected events.
The Destructors
by: Graham
Greene
When a story is referenced by a thoughtful movie you can't help but be curious. The movie, Donnie Darko more than just mentions the book--the main character acts in a similar manner to the stories' main characters by vandalizing his school. I grabbed a collection of stories by Graham Greene from the library so I could check this short story out and inspire myself to be destructively creative.
Farenheight
451
by: Ray
Bradbury
I love books on tape. The combination of poor eyesight and staring at computer screens ends in eye strain for me. How great is it to be able to sit back and let the words flow into your ears instead of scaviging the page back and forth repeatedly. At first I was put off when the book was missing from the shelf at the library but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Guy Montag. What a name. "Montag" is "Monday" in german....and though I'm sure I get some points for knowing that tidbit, I am just as certain I lose more points for completely missing the significance of him having this surname.
Its also amusing to have one person try to distinguish between the different characters. In this case the narrator was a guy and he did a pretty good job, though it was hard not to get distracted when he read the female voices. You'd have to hear it I guess.
You know, I'm not quite sure why I picked this book out since I knew virtually nothing about it. Perhaps it being mentioned here and there gave it an unconscious appeal. Anyway, for me, it was the right book at the right time. As in Aldous Huxley's, A Brave New World, its interesting to see how so much of what someone has said about social trends 50 or 100 years ago or more is still true today or has come to pass as predicted.
The background of the story is that the main character lives in a country that is a colonial power where the citizens are happy in a superficial sense but each and every is empty and deeply troubled on an unconsious level. The society maintains this bliss by outlawing books, which are deamonized for the ideas that they contain because they are both corrupting and useless. The status quo is maintained by stripping people of their ideas, leaving their mechanism of reason nothing to work with. People are kept in a perpetual state of happiness by stimulating themselves with high tech televisions that have grown to replace entire walls by this point.
Programming, conversation, life in general is devoid of sense or purpose and people, in their ignorance, have embraced and defend this state of affairs. This is wholley unknown to everyone save for the unknown parties who have molded and maintain things as they are. As is made clear by Guy's internal conflict, struggle and escape from society, and the demise of the city, this is an undesireable and unsustainable situation for the individual and the society. The hope for the future lies with those who carry with them the last remnants of our great books and lay in waiting to rebuild society by restoring the ideas that were lost after the inevitable collapse.
In particular, I like the transformation that Guy Montag undergoes as soon as he realizes that he believes that ideas have value. He doesn't understand them at all, and knows neither their power nor how they can be used. To build an awareness of our mental processes and to yeild control over them is not easy once we take on this responsibility. Speaking from experience, it is an entirely different process from the structured learning in schools. One quote from the book hit home:
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.
On more than one occasion I have, in ignorance, failed to justify a false belief, though not for lack of trying. I ended up overdrawing my funds, which consisted for the most part of borrowed insight. After a bit of research I tend to declare myself an expert--only to wind up doubly ignorant since I know thought myself to be knowledgable. In reality I had a little
Today there is no doubt that ideas are undervalued. Few people forgive nerds for their shortcomings upon recognition of their brilliance. It is not uncommon to for people to marvel at man's gift of reason, but I have not often had the chance to witness a person's shock upon witnessing the neglect or misuse of this gift. Everyone knows that "knowledge is power", but now many people seek to maximize its potential?
I like ideas (It says so on my resume). I like this book. There are a lot of them to take in. Many of them are FREE! There are some available online from the Ted Talks. I like many of them. In fact, I think I will check out some more in the near future. Next up is John Stewart Mill's, On Liberty, and on deck is Buckminster Fuller's, Critical Path.
Born
in the Big Rains
by: Fadumo
Korn
pages: 192 pages
I attended a talk at Cornell by Fadumo, the author, where they were preparing an art exhibition to raise awareness of Female Genitalia Mutilation. She is personally spreading her message both with her book and by word of mouth. Hers is an interesting story. She is a Somali woman who, as tradition mandates, was circumsized at a young age. This profoundly affected her life, more so than most, because as a result she was beset by multiple illnesses.
To save her life, her parents sent her to live with wealthy family who lived in the capital and controlled the Somolian government. Fadumo went from a difficult nomadic life to pampered city life under the care of her uncle. When her conditioned worsened, she moved to Berlin for medical treatment. She comes into her own in Germany where she finds live and marries, has a child, and lives a quiet life with her new family. Her native Somalia, however, falls apart.
Fadumo tells of her throughs and struggles as she moves from place to place and as she matures as a woman. She recounts some of the aspects of modern living that left an impression on her. Many details relate to her physical health and how she gradually became aware of her body through the help doctors who are able, and some who are unable, to treat her illnesses and repair both physical and emotional damage done when she was circumsized. Her changing point of view gives her a new perspectives and strongly held beliefs regarding her family, her culture, medical practice, and affecting social change.
Hegemony
or Survival
by: Noam Chomsky
pages: 288 pages
Were history classes in gradeschool engaging? Hardly. I studied my facts and dates, but rarely encountered new and though-provoking ideas--strange considering I was studying the actions of people. While oblivious to the fact, the world continued turning and eventually I noticed it, though I couldn't understand it. I knew little, and with what I had to draw upon I couldn't make sense of what I saw. I was both educated and ignorant, and startled by both the scope of my ignorance and the qualities of what was omitted. Specific to U.S. Foreign policy, it was startling what was ommitted from the public record, common public knowledge, and as a result, public discussion.
I like Noam Chomsky. He is a pioneer in the field of linguistics and has contributed significantly to human knowledge. Noam is hard working and capable, a combination that enable his intimidating productivity. He is clear thinking, rational, and thorough, and so his ideas are transparent, accessible, and persuasive. Lastly, and of greatest importance, he is not not authoratative, offensive, or otherwise demanding. His politics are amazingly reasonable in contrast to most experts. He accommodates the most outrageous of contradictory claims, arguing only with the most objective (if any history can be said to be so) accounts of the facts, and presents his ideas rather than imposing them.
Listen to Noam and he will tell you that the U.S. is operating alone in the world without support from the world. He will report on all facets of U.S. foreign policy including the public facade, the accepted doctrine, its internal workings, its overt actions and their effects. He will also support his ideas, and do it well, with a scientific rigor that is hard to disagree with unless you have done the same. Given that the documents he cites are so broad in scope, you can forget about investigating all his sources. That is disheartening, but not reason to forego the usual skepticism with which one should approach any honest discussion. I doubt Noam would advocate for that either. What is worthwhile is not just the attention to his ideas, but the nature of their presentation. Noam has civility to his politics and an honesty in his discourse I have rarely seen elsewhere. Noam make an irrefutable case that, being in a democrarcy, it is neccessary for all to participate in politics for the system to run effectively. By copying his methods of polical discussion, perhaps we can make the experience less painful too.
How
to Make Friends And Influence People
by: Dale Carnegie
pages: 248 pages
This book is required reading for one of my sisters courses at Elmira College. The aim of the book is to give the reader skills to succeed in life. The recommendations are mostly common sense, and the support for their use is largely anecdotal. The author is not peddling a bag of tricks to be used on subordinates or a particular formula for success. Rather, he advocates for a more fundamental self-transformation to be affected through careful introspection, self-observation, and deliberate effort motivated by a genuine desire to improve ourselves.
Though the book is said to be the first of its kind, the advice is not original--drawn from widely read philosophical and religious works as well as interviews of well known people. The content is wide in scope but well organized in its delivery. What makes this book worth reading is that the act of reading brings the ideas to the forefront of our minds, so that we will actually think about and use the principles mentioned in daily life. The advice presented has been preached by the author for years with much success and this particular work has been met with the highest acclaim.
Whether or not one accepts the principles put forward as acceptable for living one's life, the art of being aware of how we interact with eachother and that of improving our relationships are important enough to say that reading this book is worthwhile.
Works-in-Progress
Chess Openings the Easy Way
by: Nick Defirmian
Currently: Lost
The logical place to start with my chess game is the opening...and there are many variations. I am getting better at recognizing the patterns that qualify as sound chess moves, and though I still feel like a wanderer in this land...now I am a bit more comfortable. Sadly, I have lost my fondness for the opening, "Evan's Gambit", which seems to lead to an ass whooping every time.
Critical
Path
by: Buckminster Fuller
Currently: Somewhere in the middle skipping around
He is a world renoun pioneer of engineering. Many people have heard of his geodesic dome and even I have heard of his dyomixian homes. The book reads like a conversation with the man, whose words have been shaped through years of careful thought and self-study. At the start he offers up his life story--a majority has been his own personal experiment.
Software
Requirements
by: Karl E. Wiegers
Currently: Skimming
What is the most difficult part of my job? Its not the diorientation of working with all new tools under a completely new file management scheme. Part of it is the business domain and the terminology used to communicate it. Getting oriented with someone else's code--always a challenge. But gathering requirements is a tough, tough job, and always is for a software developer in all but the best situations.
So I went to the Barnes & Noble, and looked through a bunch of books. I came across this book that seems to have been written with me in mind. Yes, I could use some work in developing better software, and the ins and outs of both .NET and SQL. BUT, that I will learn by doing. Learning to gather requirements--that won't happen unless I take extra steps to learn it.
The book does spend the first few pages espousing the importance of requirements, and warning of the dangers of shoddy requirements gathering. I expect Karl to continue to try and sell me on this throughout the book. That I could do without--I can judge the imporance of each part on my own. Right away I get definitions, a logical breakdown of what seems a complete and dependable requirements management and management engineering scheme to draw from, and practices that I can use as tools. This will be a helpful little reference in the weeks to come.
The
Portable Plato
by: Plato
Translated by: Benjamin Jowett
Currently: Phaedo
Will Smith says that all kids should read Plato's "The Republic". No doubt he's getting one hell of an education, and I may be further behind in my own than I thought. So far I have made my way through Protagorus, and now I am in the middle of Symposium.
Protagorus is the story of a man with a greek sounding name who is going to pay a "wise" Sophist, Protagorus, to teach him about virtue. Protagorus has quite a reputation as a wise philosopher, and after a few words he has the devotion of this eager student. That is until after Socrates, after recieving Protagirus's reply to the questions of whether virtue can be taught and whether virtue is a unified whole or distinct and mutually exclusive set of virtues, is able to expose Protagorus logic to be fallable.
Symposium takes place at a dinner party, where several learned men are gathered. Since they are all smarties, they decide that making speeches praising the god of love rather than get sloppy drunk on wine. They all make speeches, concerned more about whether the following orator will find fault with their speech than with the soundness of their praises. Socrates then steps to the plate and delivers a trademark "you-have-it-all-wrong" speech exposing this type of talk for what it is--crediting the subject with all types of accomplishments never achieved and complements undeserved.
What follows are the details of his studies of love under the wise Diotima, "The Oracle". The nature of the god love is the product of his parents, and so is characteristically poor, exposed, distressed, and mortal as well as a bold, wise, and immortal hunter. She distinguished between the loved, that which is truly beautiful, and love which is a mean between virtue and the lack thereof. Loves object is more than beauty, it is the good because it brings happiness and that because everyone desires happiness they can all be said to love, not just a few. That the act of love is a desire for birth and creation of beauty, and ultimately immortality.
Socrates's speech is followed by applause and then a party and drinking. Eventually the last member of the group, quite drunk, decides to give his speech. He accuses Socrates of vanity, aggression, and then goes on to recount how he wanted to sleep with Socrates but that Socrates wouldn't indulge him. I'm not quite sure what to make of this.
On
Liberty
by: John Stewart Mill
pages: N/A
Currently: Using it as background music
Future Favorites
Thus Spake Zarasthura
by: Friedrich Nietzsche
Currently: Sneaked a Peak
Critique of Judgement
by: Immanuel Kant
Currently: Sneaked a Peak