Just finished the Nagasaki book. I'm happy I read it but happy it's over too. Up next will probably be "Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget" and then I'm taking a break from depressing books for a while.
I'm at 28 books for the year, which is kinda depressing that my reading rate is going down. Do you guys have goals for yourself with the books you read?
Don't beat yourself up over numbers. Quality > quantity and all that. I decided to bite the bullet and now I'm reading "A History of Western Philosophy". It's very much the book you'd expect to be written about history in 1945, in my opinion. Hopefully it gets better.
I'm reading The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. As a social psychologist, he seems to really like social psychology as the explanation for everything, but he still presents a compelling argument. I'm interested to get into some of the more political ramifications of his theory later in the book.
I'm in a book "club" with my one buddy, and she picked first, so we're reading The Emperor Of All Maladies. It's wicked. I can't imagine getting sick before... well, practically ever. You could take your pick of any period of human history and there would be massive, gaping holes in our medical knowledge even as recently as the '80s or '90s. And there are gaps today, notably, and eponymously, in our understanding of cancer. It's crazy to think that pretty much any diagnosis of cancer was a total death sentence, and the earliest breakthroughs in treatments (as we would now recognize such things--I don't count a shaman rubbing worm's wort a worthy treatment) , in the 40s and 50s, were only remissions of a few months, and even then only in certain types of cancer. I'm only a third of the way through it, and the "biography" goes linearly, so I'm not at the cutting edge yet. Goals for books read this year? I think it's to read once a day. And so far, so good. I don't think tracking a number of distinct books is good for much other than stroking the ol' ego. I've read articles or essays that have impacts on me much larger than any books, and single books that take weeks or months to read. Anna Karenina took me like five or six weeks last summer. NB The audiobook is how I'm mainly ingesting the book, and I don't like the narrator. It's a Brit, and it makes it sound prim and stuffy. I'd much prefer the author to read it, but oh well.
If it's an ego thing that's a very silly thing to be egotistical about. For me it's always been about motivating myself to read more and noticing when I haven't made time to read. I have to make a conscious effort since it's easy to get busy with other things and stop making time. Book clubs are definitely another good motivator, but mine meets pretty rarely right now. I like the idea of a book buddy - quicker turnaround and easier to schedule.
"Metaphors We Live By" - Lakoff & Johnson, & "Lee Miller: A Life" - Carolyn Burke I put a hard limit on watching TV and playing video games recently to help build better reading habits. I never stopped enjoying it, but was turning to 'easier' alternatives to distract myself from life and stuff after work every day. It's helping so far.
I will hit my goal of 50 books for the year! Currently on 46, Paranomality Then a few of the Hugo nominees that I got on sale in the summer sales. I switch to fiction for December to round out the reading.
I started A Blue Hand - The Beats in India By Deborah Baker. It's... different. It was a $5 find at a closing down sale at a store in the city and it looked and sounded interesting. I guess it's just very slow moving. Not sure what I was expecting. My whole family were doing that '2015 Reading Challenge' thing that was going around. I started it and was doing quite well, but realised that I wasn't reading books I actually wanted to read, but books that would check off whichever the next box was. Although that did get me to read some things I probably never would have picked up otherwise, like The Brothers Karamazov and In Cold Blood, both of which I really enjoyed.
I'm listening to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami on audiobook. I never listen to audiobooks, but the narrator for this one is really great and I love me some Murakami! The one annoying thing is that it's taking forever for me to get through since I read so much faster than speaking rate. I'm also reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I love the story and the execution for the most part, but his writing is just slightly too pretentious for me.
Sometimes. I just started Cryptonomicon instead of prioritizing finishing my other books, which is silly. But I've lagged behind my peer group for too long and Anathem is probably my favorite book of the century so far.Do you guys have goals for yourself with the books you read?
Well, for my wife for an early Christmas present I got her Komiks: Comic Art in Russia. I was going to crack it open tonight and read it a bit, but it's nowhere to be found. It's probably in her purse, or on her desk at work. So I guess until I can get my hands on it, I'll just read something else. Probably one of the graphic novels I have sitting on my shelf but haven't gotten around to (I've had a long year.)