Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

What are you reading? Mar 13, 2013

For those who are new … we discuss books.  I list what I’m reading, and people comment with what they’re reading.  Sometimes, on Sundays, I post a special edition on a particular genre or topic.

If you like to trade books, try bookmooch

I’ve written some book reviews on Yahoo Voices:

Book reviews on Yahoo

Just finished

Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith. A light and funny short novel featuring Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfield, a professor of Romance philology in Regensburg, Germany. A send-up of academia and its discontents

(started and finished) Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis. The world of competitive Scrabble and some of its top players. A good book that captures the lure of the game, but Fatsis spends too much time on some of the more unusual characters (and their more unusual characteristics).

Now reading

Cooler Smarter: Practical tips for low carbon living  by the scientists at Union of Concerned Scientists, a great group. These folk make sense, concentrating on the changes you can make that have the biggest impact with the least effort.

Thinking, fast and slow  by Daniel Kahneman.  Kahneman, most famous for his work with the late Amos Tversky, is one of the leading psychologists of the times. Here, he posits that our brains have two systems: A fast one and a slow one. Neither is better, but they are good at different things. This is a brilliant book: Full of insight and very well written, as well.

What hath God wrought? by Daniel Walker Howe. Subtitled “The transformation of America 1815-1848. I am reading this with the History group at GoodReads.  This is very well written, and does a good job especially with coverage of the treatment of Blacks and Native Americans.

The hard SF renaissance  ed. by David G. Hartwell.  A large anthology of “hard” SF from the 90’s and 00’s. I think Hartwell takes SF a bit too seriously, but the stories are good.

On politics: A history of political thought from Herodotus to the present by Alan Ryan. What the subtitle says – a history of political thought.  

He, she and it by Marge Percy. Near future dystopian SF set on Earth.

A Most Dangerous Book  by Christopher Krebs. How a short book by the Roman Tacitus had a dangerous life, culminating in its use by the Nazis to support their ideas of lebensraum and “Ein volk, Ein reich, ein fuhrer”.

The Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven. The sequel to Ringworld in which Louis Wu, Chmee and the Hindmost return to Ringworld, which has become unstable.

Measurement by Paul Lockhart. About mathematics and, especially, how it should be taught and learned. Lockhart is wonderful; his first book A Mathematician’s Lament was, in my view, the best books on teaching math ever written.

Just started

Nothing this week (but see above)


7 comments

  1. Remembered why I didn’t pick up one of his books and go “oh I’ll read just a couple of chapters.” I am totally immersed in “The Lost Symbol.”

  2. slksfca

    …in the opening chapters of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. I can’t seem to get on his wavelength, maybe because I haven’t been much of a novel reader for quite awhile, or maybe because I keep getting distracted by my glossy new Kindle Fire (which I’m loving). But I’ll persevere because I’ve been told by many people that it’s a very good read.

  3. Via Chicago

    I was just thinking about the odd mix of recent books on my Nook. It’s a cross-section between books on physics, the brain, and science in general (all for the layperson) and the most recent additions, mystery novels.

    In the past the closest I’ve ever been to reading mysteries were Paul Auster books. Now I read them late into the night.

    Thinking about it more, I realized mystery novels fit right in with the science books.

    I recommend the book I most recently finished, Face Of The Enemy by Dobson and Myers. It’s a mystery set in NYC at the beginning of WWII and along with having a good mystery plot, is an exploration of the culture of the time and the hysteria and discrimination that accompanies the beginning of the war.

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