An interesting and readable collection of essays on astrophysics. The author isn’t afraid to expose his sense of humor, which livens up potentially dry material at the cost of the occasional groaner. He ranges somewhat randomly through astronomy, physics, and math, with a fair bit of history thrown in for color and background. It was a relaxingly easy read, especially in contrast to the first few hundred pages of The Road to Reality that I soldiered through on my winter break.
This is mostly biography with a dollop of computing history on top—a pantheon of old IBM mainframe model numbers are rolled out in response to “when did you write your first program?” The interviewees are varied and interesting and almost all of them were not annoying. Unlike Beautiful Code, I did not alternate between thinking “this is fascinating” and “if this is beauty, then just kill me now.” Perhaps it was some combination of Siebel’s carefully chosen questions and good editing, but the interviewees came across as far more conversational and adept at storytelling than I would have imagined for a random selection of nerdy programmers.
Interesting biography and interviews with fifteen computer scientists. I read this before Coders at Work but I’m reviewing it after, so I’ll note that this book focuses less on the practice of programming (understandably) and more on the individual history of each of its subjects. Knuth is the only overlap in the interviewees, with OoTM focusing more on 50s, 60s and 70s computer science (Brooks, Lamport, McCarthy, Dijkstra, etc.) and CaW running the gamut. The circuitous routes taken into computing by nearly all of the subjects is pretty fascinating. Nearly all of them stumbled into academia or spent some time there. I wonder how many would have taken the trouble to surmount the hurdles one faces today.
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100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You didn’t know
A collection of 100 essays on vaguely mathematics-related things. Makes for good train or bus reading as each essay is only a few pages and self-contained. On the other hand, the brevity of the essay tends to prevent them from getting into super interesting details, so it’s definitely light reading. A final note: don’t buy this on the Kindle. It lacks the illustrations, which for some of the essays is a rather critical omission. It’s apparently coming out in paperback in 2010, so kill some trees and get a version with pictures.
A poignant story about a housekeeper, her son and a professor of mathematics who can no longer form long-term memories. It’s told with a quiet poetry and an enthusiasm for math and baseball. I couldn’t help thinking frequently about what it would be like to be on either side of that equation.
A consistently readable, but only mostly consistently convincing book about rationality and human nature. Some of his arguments stretch a bit thin, but I have to admit that his rational interpretation of the world resonates with my own biases. Even where I feel that he’s over extending, I find myself wanting to believe him. I’ll conveniently ignore the irrationality of this, lest it undermine his thesis and ruin the fun for everyone.
A mostly readable investigation into the nature of time. When the author is talking physics, it’s good going, when he veers into philosophy or neuroscience, not so much. That doesn’t come as a big surprise given that he’s a physicist, but it causes the book to drag on a bit, providing an object lesson in our subjective perception of time.
I don’t like Yoshimoto as much as I like Murakami, but she has a charming quirkiness and her characters are no less wacky. This book is actually two novelettes. I preferred the surreal mysticism of the latter, Moonlight Story, to the emotional angst of the former, from which the book draws its title.
Wrapped this one up just in time to hear Obama give his inaugural address. I was impressed with the consistency of his message, especially given the lack of stated presidential ambition in Audacity. I’ll admit to the probably naive impression that his ideals survived the rough road to presidency rather than the more cynical assessment that they were calculated to take him there from the start.
Ross has such an encyclopedic knowledge of music that I can’t imagine what it’s like for her to listen to a new piece. It must be a constant parade of quotations and reminders. Fortunately for the reader, this gives her the ability to point out subtle connections and influences and combines with her incredible talent for describing music via written analogy to deliver an experience that is in some cases possibly better than listening to the music firsthand. I would love to someday read as thorough and well researched an account of the history of electronic music, though perhaps like most everything else in the late 20th century, that has exploded to such a size as to be impractical to accurately chronicle.
A compendium of excellent advice and thorough explanations for same. You can hardly write ten lines of Java code without doing something that would benefit from the advice in this book. Many of the patterns are applicable beyond Java as well.
It’s a pleasure to read Hofstadter again, with his wacky dreamt up dialogues and penchant for punnery. However, this book was fairly tightly focused on a single issue — one that I was on board with after the first hundred pages or so. I much preferred the vast sweeping intellectual adventure that was GEB, the more technical exposition of Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies or even the way out in left field (even for Hofstadter) musings on poetry translation in Le Ton Beau De Marot. Still, it’s good to see him back in the saddle.
A Rosencrantz and Guildenstern approach to a selection of episodes from the bible and Western history. Barnes overflows with cheek and audacity right up to the last chapter, when his existential steam seems to runs out. He confines eternity to prayer, sensory pleasures and sport. How such an imaginative author could fail to include imagination in his post-human utopia boggles my mind. Don’t like the Hell theme park? Build a better one!
