Now reading: Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson

Started reading again, somehow. Book recommended by Glen, and the first two chapters have been pretty interesting.

Reading: Never Let Me Go

I borrowed Kazuo Ishigaru's Never Let Me Go after reading LiCh's excellent post on the book. I haven't yet finished, even though I tear through huge chunks of the book each time I start. Somehow I feel like I don't want to read the book in snatches the way I usually do, I'd rather really read the text and understand what's being said. I feel like there's something beneath the surface there, that I'd only grasp if I could understand it better.

Plot-wise, it's quite clear that it must be alternate-universe - somehow, a world in which cloning was available in, say, the 1980s. I mean, cassette tapes and Walkmans. But I'm willing to suspend disbelief, and let meaning override consistency. In the meantime, here's a short excerpt which made me stop reading on that page, just so I would remember to blog it.

What I'm saying is that we were all of us struggling to adjust to our new life, and I suppose all of us did things back then we later regretted. I was really upset by Ruth's remark at the time, but it's pointless now trying to judge her or anyone else for the way they behaved during those early days at the Cottages.

Regret's a big part of my life. So many things I said that were cringe-worthy, so many things done that I should never have, can barely forgive myself for, so I simply try to forget, and hope that everyone forgets as well, that in others' memories only the best things are preserved. But then again, would I really extend the same benefit to those I know? If I don't blame others for their transgressions, it's likely because I did not notice, or don't remember.....

Finished reading: Gardens of the Moon, Steven Erikson

His prologue explains how his writing style is different from other fantasy writers. I'm not entirely convinced that it is that different, but he does try to make his explanations fit better into the story.

That having been said, I was captivated enough to want to finish reading it, but not enough to want to get the next book. At the end, I've got so many questions - How does one become an Ascendant? What is the relationship between Caladan Brood and Anomander Rake? Does the Deck of Dragons dynamically update? How will Sorry + Crokus work out? Are Kelanved and Dancer in a different book? What does Quick Ben have planned?

A product of his writing style, I guess, because he leaves sooooo many threads hanging. But despite that, I don't really feel like I HAVE to read the next book, and I'm now contemplating leaving the book in Geneva if I have problems with my luggage. Ah well, the book was cheap and it was an entertaining read, so it's not a total loss, I guess.

Kindle, e-book reader

I've been thinking about an e-book reader for a while now. I really like reading, and especially re-reading favourite passages, but I hate storing books. They turn all moldy and brown and silverfish swarm all over, and it takes up lots of space. E-books are fine (I've been reading little books on my Axim for a while now) but it's difficult to read in sunlight generally. Plus battery life might be a problem. And the books I want to read may just generally not be available.. And it's difficult to do cross-referencing between pages.

So I've been looking with interest as the Kindle, Cybook, and other e-book readers get good reviews.

Communities Dominate Blogs linked up an article on the number of Kindles in circulation. And of course Tyler Cowen has been writing about the Kindle (since he bought one) saying that it's better for fiction than non-fiction, noting the low, low price of an e-book, and that sales of e-books are going up. That last post also linked an NYTimes article about how Kindle might affect the book market as a whole. Preetam Rai also reviewed much earlier the Cybook Gen 3, and the photos he posted (plus the Kindle photo in the NYTimes article) assure me that the screens can be bright enough for good reading. The usual tradeoff for that is battery life, though the article on Electronic Ink posted by Preetam suggests that it does not drain power as long as the page is not updated. (As a note, Wiki says that Kindle is also e-paper based.)

Hmm.. i-Phone? Kindle? Gosh... not earning enough...

Now reading: Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

I'm so starved of English books here, I went to Foyle's in London and looked for anything on sale. This was pretty cheap, 4 quid special price. Good reading so far, will have to see...

I'm thinking about getting a Kindle. I've seen a few good reviews of it, and frankly for me an electronic reader is probably best. I treat my books badly, travel frequently, like to re-read but don't really like the storage space they take up. Only thing is, will all the titles be available? And will I get used to reading off a screen? Part of my experience with screens is that it's awful hard to read outdoors, and turning up the brightness normally burns out the battery pretty fast. Whereas, well, a battered paperback can be read pretty much anywhere - except where it's dark, of course. Haha....

Read: Gang Leader for a Day

A bit of a tease - It's an easy read for people who don't know much about race politics and drug crime in the US (but are interested), but ultimately I'm disappointed in the ending. It reads like a teen story, including the rushed ending that doesn't give closure. But then again, that's probably what real-life gets you.

Now reading: Gang Leader for a Day

Sudhir Venkatesh - if the name's not familiar, cast your mind back to the curious chapter in Freakonomics about a sociologist studying crack cocaine gangs in Chicago... So yes, I saw this in Kino and bought in on an impulse last week Tuesday - without realising there was a sale this weekend.

Books read: New Ideas from Dead Economists

New Ideas from Dead Economists, by Todd G. Buchholz.

An interesting introduction to key economic ideas for non-economists like me. It's not very deep on insight, but Buchholz spices it up with a lot of weird, weird analogies and strange puns, and cute anecdotes about the various dead economists he draws from.

Not a book I'd read a second time, but decent, yes.

Reading: PS I Love You

KeY read this book and loved it a lot. Apparently she sniffed her way through the book... So now I'm the one s'posed to read it....

Books Read: The No-Asshole Rule

This book was not as good as it could have been, somehow. The book was not deficient in any particular way. It was well-organized, like a lesson plan, moving from describing assholes to how they damage their surroundings to why they should be kept out (ie the No-Asshole Rule) to how to defeat them etc... It was well-written, with no editorial gaffes (better than I can say for my blog articles) and some dry wit and word play (like "time wounds all heels").

Yet I lost interest halfway through the second chapter, while Sutton was still describing some of the assholes.

Basically, the central idea of the book was originally written up in a short article form, and that's how much meat there was. When expanded to a full (and not very thick but still not a short story length) book he ended up padding the book with lots of examples and illustrations. If it had been meat I could have kept reading, and if it had been engaging fluff I could have kept reading, but in this case - well - I understood the rule pretty well, thank you, and that was pretty much the end for the book for me.

Now reading: The No-Asshole Rule

The title got me first.
Then the author sounded familiar.
And then I read the bookback and thought, this should be interesting.

Books read: Microtrends

Just finished reading Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes, by Mark Penn. It's an entertaining read, full of conversational fodder which you can use to seem really wise in all kinds of situations - from when you're trying to entertain good friends at dinner, to when you're trying to impress those people you just met five minutes ago at a cocktail dinner.

The book is also an easy read. The microtrends themselves are in bite-size chunks, so I can catch one trend in about five minutes while waiting for a friend, three more in the twenty minutes on the bus, and so on. And those small little chunks are themselves very entertaining little slices of life, focusing on the little minutiae which make that micro-group so counter-intuitive and interesting.

So, a good read? Yes.

I'm just not so sure it's useful, nutritional stuff.

Thing is, I don't feel any cleverer or smarter. Most of the little microtrend factoids within just seem to be interesting titbits, but they won't help me to live a better life, nor assist me to come up with a better business (even if Penn seems to pitch it that way sometimes, talking about new business niches all the time).


In the end I would say, it's kind of like the book equivalent of fast food french fries.

Northern Lights

Penny (Elaine) 's been recommending His Dark Materials for the longest time, so I picked it up for the plane ride to/from Jakarta last week. And with the author's recent interviews indicating that he liked CS Lewis' Narnia works but thought that Tolkien's LotR had no substance, it seemed he might have something there in his own work.

It was.... not as good as it could have been. A very interesting backstory, with the daemons, fate, some quantum weirdness. But done in too cavalier a manner, the story's too short, everything falls into place too easily. Unless his whole theme is meant to be that Lyra is the fated one and that everyone else she meets is just cannon fodder in the story of her life, and the book is meant to feel like that. That's like HP telling me that Eddings' repetitious writing style in his Belgariad and Malloreon series is meant to fill in the theme of recurring patterns of history.

I definitely won't be buying the next two books, I think. Maybe borrow from library just to see the completion of his ideas.

And contrary to what Wing thinks, without having read the last two books, I do think Asriel and Coulter are both evil people.

Das Weihnachtsschwein

I bought this book by Kinky Friedman in Zurich on a whim. Basically because while in Switzerland I'm feeling my interest in German rekindled again and I think reading a German storybook would improve my vocab. Here goes...

The Ideas that Conquered the World

Michael Mandelbaum's book, recommended by CL - a quick review because I didn't really think it was all that fantastic. The central hypothesis is that peace (or a preference for peace over war), democracy, and free markets are the cultural ideas that have come to the forefront over the last few centuries. He therefore paints the past conflicts - especially the world wars and the end of the Cold War - as a triumph of these ideas over their opposites.

It's an engaging theme but a little too simplified I think - and the simplifications required to make the argument work in the end make me more distrustful of the conclusion. Okay to read, kind of dry, and seriously - much of this stuff is old news.

Want to read: Everyday Engineering

Via FastCompany, I want to read Everyday Engineering. For info, IDEO is an engineering design lab, quite cool stuff, especially if you like building / making cool stuff...

Now reading: From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman

Reading: Interesting Times, Terry Pratchett

an interesting excerpt describing an acorn.

"... a tiny soundless voice which said, yes, I am but a small, green, simple object - but I dream about forests."

Much to be said about potential...

Read: The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson

I just finished reading The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. This is the same guy who wrote Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, and basically I've been pretty impressed by his writing.

One recurrent theme between Snow Crash and The Diamond Age is the idea that stories have power - a theme that is shared with American Gods (Neil Gaiman). In particular, I liked the concept, that in the stories told by our ancestors, cleverness and technology are often linked to the same "gods" - Coyote, Brer Rabbit, Enki, Athena, Loki / Odin among others. The Diamond Age added to this, when in one section, a Chinese character, Dr X, says that:

When our society was based upon planting, it could trul be said, as the Master [Confucius] did, 'Virtue is the root; wealth is the result.' But under the Western ti, wealth comes not from virtue but from cleverness.

The implication is that the root Chinese society emphasises virtue over cleverness. Looking back at our chinese myths, the question then is, who are our deities of cunning and cleverness. To me, it seems that we should look at Sun Wukong and Zhuge Liang - one, an almost certainly mythical character, the other, probably a real person translated into myth in the same way as Homer translated the Greek heroes into the Iliad. In the case of the Monkey God, his cunning is related in his monkey origins, playful nature, transformative magic; whereas in Zhuge Liang's case, his is the strategic vision, the tactical prowess, the military technology. And in both cases, we have a clear case of virtue trumping cunning.

In Sun Wukong's case, first he is quelled by Buddha. Then he is restrained by his golden circlet, controlled by the meditations of his monk master Tripitaka. And lastly, there is the Journey to the West itself, to regain the scriptures, a quest where he finally acknowledges his duty to Tripitaka and is elevated to godhood. In Zhuge Liang's case, we first see the success of his strategems when working for Liu Bei, and later, the undermining of his brilliance by his steadfast loyalty to Liu Bei's son, the "hun jun" Ah Dou.

Yet in each case both virtue and cleverness are necessary ingredients for success. To quote, out of context, the protagonist of the story:

Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.

If I could teach my children one thing, it would be how to deal/resolve/cope with contradiction and ambiguity...

Now reading: The J Curve, Ian Bremmer