What are you reading?

[Swedgen]

Presently reading Catastrophes by Donald Prothero, alongside Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

 

Got two Steven Pinker books looking at me from the shelves too that I can't wait to dive into.

[davidivad]

Quantum field theory in a nutshell by A. Zee.

....I need better math skills but that's ok. I'm working on that too.

[zapatos]

A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn

 

Seems to be the version of United States history that is not taught to grade school children since it doesn't cast us in the best light.

[Acme]

Just took delivery of Ethnobotany of Western Washington: The Knowledge and Use of Indigenous Plants By Native Americans by Erna Gunther. I have been referring to an online source at University of Michigan for individual plants, but this is my first book. Looking forward to meeting old friends and making new.

 

Did you know (according to the Michigan source) that chewing my native Fringecup - Tellima grandiflora will keep you from having dreams of having sex with dead people? Will see if Erna confirms that. :read:

[Schneibster]

I'm reading Sterling's Schismatirix Plus and looking at the three-volume updated John Shirley trilogy, Eclipse with some anticipation. It's time to remember the heady days of cyberpunk, when I was a godlike programmer and we were gonna run the frickin' world and duel with the rich and greedy forces of evil for control of the 'Net. I'll probably read William Gibson's Neuromancer books next.

[Acme]

Currently re-reading Hofstadter's I Am A Strange Loop.

'Round and 'round and 'round we go; where we stop Dougie will 'round . . .

[Schneibster]

I'm in a fiction phase now.

 

I have not yet read the last book of "The Wheel of Time," A Memory of Light. There are at least two Varley "Thunder" books I do not own, and one I have that is out of order and I cannot read until I get its predecessor. Iain M. Banks has at least two books out I have not read; one or both is a "Culture" novel. I think there are probablyone or two C. J. Cherryh "Foreigner" novels out I have not even heard of. I haven't even investigated what Gene Wolfe, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Neal Stephenson have been doing and have yet to finish Galileo's Dream. So it's definitely going to be fiction for me for a while.

 

I'm contemplating whether it might actually be easier to catalog my books, then buy electronic copies, and a Kindle or whatever, than to put them away. I have at least four piles of books which I have read in the last year and was too dang lazy to put away. (We moved, so they were completely disordered anyway. It's not like I made a new mess. Shrug.)

 

Have you read the 20th Anniversary edition of GEB:EGB? I bought it, read the old edition once more for old times' sake, and gave it away to a deserving young man and have read the 20th Anniversary edition twice since. He has not completed it yet once, but has begun asking questions about recursion that indicate it's beginning to have an impact.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Schneibster

[Acme]

I'm in a fiction phase now.

...

Have you read the 20th Anniversary edition of GEB:EGB? I bought it, read the old edition once more for old times' sake, and gave it away to a deserving young man and have read the 20th Anniversary edition twice since. He has not completed it yet once, but has begun asking questions about recursion that indicate it's beginning to have an impact.

I have been in a no-fiction phase for the last decade or two. Truth is stranger than fiction, if not loopier.

Haven't read the new GEB. What's new in it? As I commented somewhere else here recently, I lost my library of 100's of volumes some 20 years ago and decided to go minimalist on the bookage. GEB was one of the casualties. I have only 20 or so books now of which 6 are plant ID guides. I gave Strange Loop to a deserving young man & it boomeranged after several years unread. Thought I'd go for another read & release. Did you also read Metamagical Themas? While I had read many of the articles as they came out in Scientific American, I stumbled on the book at a library and gave it a read.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Acme

[Schneibster]

I have never had a book disaster, so I still have stuff from my adolescence. I am knocking on all wood within reach.

 

As for the 20th Anniv. GEB, there are fixed typos, updated examples that eliminated superseded physics, and some editorial changes, mostly at the beginnings or endings of chapters where he felt he could have been clearer. Certainly it wasn't a major rewrite. It's not going to teach you something so new it's worth reading if your original edition copy is in good shape, but it's worth the re-read if you've read it before. I enjoyed it. Douglas even fixed some of the Achilles/Tortoise stories, particularly ones with djinn!!

 

My book collection currently comprises two eight-by-five adjustable shelf cases, containing most of my hardbound books, some 300 or so, and another three six-by-five cases adjusted entirely for paperbacks, of which I estimate I have about a thousand. In addition to all of this, my wife and I each have another of the six-by-five cases in our offices, each of which is filled with technical manuals and software and hardware specification and reference books; many of the well-known O'Reilly titles fill my shelves, whereas my wife tends toward the Microsoft Press titles of equal renown. We read freely from one anothers' libraries, unless there are intellectual property issues.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Schneibster

[davidivad]

Joy, Guilt, Anger,Love by Giovanni Frazzetto

 

starting out pretty good.

[Marshalscienceguy]

Non educational books I am reading a romance novel. I have also been reading a jap/english dictionary trying to teach myself Japanese.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Marshalscienceguy

[Acme]

I have never had a book disaster, so I still have stuff from my adolescence. I am knocking on all wood within reach.

 

...

Consider making sure all candles are extinguished before going out. D'oh! A lot of my books were 'only' smoke damaged (lost a lifetime of photos, negatives, and slides as well) so I decided to cut my loses and disburse all but a few of the survivors. Friends, family, and midnight trips to library return boxes soon freed me from my horrid hoard. No more dusting, storing, moving, guarding, priding, or inging of the usual sorts. Buh-bye and don't let the shelf hit you in the spine on the way out! I have cringed at the addition of every wildflower book, but I take heart in knowing I can -and jolly well will- disburse them too when the jag dies.

[Schneibster]

LOL, freedom from possessions is one way to go. Personally I'm a packrat.

[Acme]

LOL, freedom from possessions is one way to go. ...

To paraphrase Hofstadter paraphrasing Heneker, people of small souls should not attempt it.

[ydoaPs]

I'm currently reading, among other things, Susskind's second volume of The Theoretical Minimum. This one is about QM.

 

A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn

 

Seems to be the version of United States history that is not taught to grade school children since it doesn't cast us in the best light.

Fun fact: my current Uni president tried to censor Zinn from Indiana when he was governor.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I'm attempting to read Darrell Huff's unpublished manuscript How to Lie with Smoking Statistics, commissioned by the tobacco industry in the 60s to respond to the claim that smoking causes cancer. (Huff more famously wrote How to Lie with Statistics, probably the most popular statistics book ever written.)

 

I managed to dig up most of the unpublished chapters but I'm trying to figure out why it wasn't published; as far as I can tell, he was ready to sign a contract and then nothing happened.

[Schneibster]

Starting John Shirley's "A Song Called Youth," first novel Eclipse. This is the Babbage Press quarto paperback edition from 1999, not the original 1985 octavo paperback edition which I also own. I'm looking forward to Rickenharp jamming on top of the Arc de Triomphe with a battery-powered Marshall as the giant nuclear powered swastika war machines advance to demolish it. Iconic stuff.

[Greg H.]

I am reading Walter Truett Anderson's All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization.

[Moontanman]

I am thinking seriously of rereading harry Turtledove's series World War, where aliens attack in the middle of WW2, it's one of the book series i consider a classic... I have it in my hand, hard back, nice binding, the rustle of the paper... Yeah you know who you are...

[pyroglycerine]

The Plague, by Albert Camus

[Bill Angel]

I'm currently reading ‘Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War’ by Robert M. Gates

who served as Secretary of Defense for Bush and Obama. The author provides a very frank assessment of what he thinks of Congress, of which he has a very low opinion. He also has a low opinion of Joe Biden, but a high opinion of Hillary Clinton.

[imatfaal]

The Plague, by Albert Camus

 

Mais oui. Et L’Étranger

[Acme]

Hop On Pop by Dr. Seuss

 

... My father can read big words, too. Like.....^{.............} CONSTANTINOPLE and TIMBUKTU ...

Edited April 10, 2014 by Acme

[gwiyomi17]

Currently reading Dan Brown's Digital Fortress

[LaurieAG]

I'm currently reading 'On The Shoulders of Giants', with some commentary by Stephen Hawking.

 

It contains English translations of 'On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres' by Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei's 'Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences', 'Harmonies of the World (Book five)' by Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newtons 'Principa Mathematica' and selected relativity papers by Albert Einstein.