Standup Zone Forum
General => Random => Topic started by: Chan on May 23, 2018, 03:22:58 PM
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This interesting reading list was featured on PBS last night.
http://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/books/#/
I’d include several of these if compiling a long list of my own favorites (Gulliver’s Travels, A Prayer for Owen Meany, 1984, Atlas Shrugged, etc) and there are others that I haven’t read that are now on my future list after watching the commentary (i.e. Game of Thrones, Confederacy of Dunces, The Shack, A Separate Peace).
Any Zoner votes for or against the PBS choices?
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Aargh... I love/hate these lists. 8)
I would add Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth.... both because it's worthy and to honor the man...
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A lot of good books there, but as usual, YMMV when you are scouting issues of taste.
I guess I like irony. "Gulliver's Travels" is great, and still a great read. "Catch 22" in a different venue.
I don't care for the stridently polemic types.
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Confederacy of Dunces makes a lot of lists primarily because the author committed suicide. Other than that I'm reasonably certain it would be relegated to the dustbin. It's poorly written, boring, long, pointless and artless. Other than that it's fine. Yes, I read it. Yes, I finished it. I read cereal boxes--that's not an endorsement for Cheerios.
I read a lot, I've read almost all of these books, a few of them suck. Jane Auel, Clan of the Cave Bear--Oregon writer, needed a good editor and needed to talk to someone who actually knows how a sling works. Her heroine invents everything from sling to spear thrower to bow and arrow to women's liberation. Clearly way smarter than Issac Newton. Entertaining, sort of, but requires a huge suspension of disbelief and the basic technical inaccuracy of just about anything that relates to primitive tech is too irritating. Reviewers made a big deal about her deep research. I think it all occurred in her head.
Chronicles of Narnia--bah. Religious claptrap disguised as fiction. Left Behind--same story, different verse.
Da Vinci code. Really? Yuck. I hate that I read that. Fifty shades of Grey--shoot me now. I didn't finish that piece o' shit. Why that was popular escapes me. Ready player one is breathlessly moronic. Interesting setting, likeable character, dopy story. The audible version is read by Will Wheaton, who does sort of a good job, except he really relishes all the tedious gamer stuff. I guess if you were addicted to video games you'd like it. But no.
I read about half of the first book of the Outlander series. Gets sillier and sillier. I can accept a big whopping deus ex machina, but after that things need to get tidy. they don't.
I read a Separate Peace a very long time ago, I recall the second half being tedious. Given how long ago that was it must have been stupendously so. It's kind of a B-team Catcher in the Rye.
Anthem is a better Ayn Rand book, but I read the Romantic Manifesto before I read either Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged so I already thought she was nuts.
The rest, pretty good. I found 31 I haven't read, and that's gold for me. I'm ordering them. Silly of OPB not to do an Amazon link. I wouldn't mind them making a few bucks from my purchases.
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I had the same reaction to Davinci Code apparently Pelosi’s pick (no joke it’s featured in the intro commentary). I’m stuck in a love/hate relationship with my current read the critically acclaimed Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan. I swore it off after the first chapter but had to give it a second shot. A few months later, half way through, and it makes me appreciate the readability of a Da Vinci Code and pleased to currently have an incredibly difficult and at times rewarding alternative.
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I try to read fiction about once a year after seeing lists like that, but after a few pages I remember why I don't like it. I have read quite a few from that list due to being forced to in school. My problem with fiction is I don't read books from the start--I just read random pages until I've hit most of them, so I don't know who anyone is for quite a while. So for fiction I just go back to reading Sherlock Holmes for the twentieth or so time. One novel I actually finished recently was The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, which I read only because I heard he'd based the characters on his own family, and his brother was a neighbor of mine (and pretty clearly one of the book's characters).
I'm reading Miles Davis' autobiography now--not fiction so that s%$t won't ever make any f%$#$%g list. That book is a m%^*&$f&^%$r.
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Being almost finished with “The Corrections”, a random reading order must have been tough to follow.
Franzen, Eggers, Roth... this is American literature. Books that you put on the bookshelf when you’re done.
A lot on the list is junk food reading. Goes in easy but doesn’t sustain.
I try to mix up my reading with non-fic and fic, serious effort and easy junk.
When I’m done with a good junk food title I’ll leave it somewhere to be found and hopefully read again.
But the Divici Code, now that brought out an angry bin toss.
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I'm rereading a fantastic book that probably will never make a list like this. Reality Is Not What It Seems -- Carlo Rovelli. This is the second time I've read it and I've listened to the audible version twice. After the second listening, I decided I needed to reread so important points didn't fly by while I was distracted (as if that ever happens). Highly recommended. Yeah, okay, it's about loop quantum gravity, but it's absurdly well written if a little repetitive. Poetry about physics. I realized that the repetition is intentional, aimed at taking a slightly different slice at important concepts.
Wow, I just did a google search to see what came up about this book and found that NPR did a review. It reads like a much longer version of what I just wrote. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/02/01/512798209/reality-is-not-what-we-can-see
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Just what I need...more books I can't find the time to read.... :P.
Reminds me Bill….I need to get another Kindle to hook up to you....get the audible too... :)
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I've got a spare you can have--already linked to the library. I misplaced mine, Diane bought me a fancier version of the paperwhite, but I like the el cheapo paperwhite better. So I bought another and promptly found the missing one. Elizabeth grabbed the extra paperwhite which leaves the fancy thingy, complete with cover. I'll try to remember to bring it when I come for Billy's wedding. I think the fancy one plays audible books. A little bigger screen, blah, blah but I like what I like.
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I didn't watch all of the interviews, but I think 50 Shades of Grey was a Pence pick.
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I've got a spare you can have--already linked to the library. I misplaced mine, Diane bought me a fancier version of the paperwhite, but I like the el cheapo paperwhite better. So I bought another and promptly found the missing one. Elizabeth grabbed the extra paperwhite which leaves the fancy thingy, complete with cover. I'll try to remember to bring it when I come for Billy's wedding. I think the fancy one plays audible books. A little bigger screen, blah, blah but I like what I like.
Cool...I keep expecting to find the el cheapo paperwhite I bought mixed in with some tools in a box or something. The cheap ones are great...small, kind of feels like a paperback in your hand.
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my experience with confederacy of dunces was different--loved it and laughed my ass off while reading for most of it.
and the suicide was well known for all the many years in which the author's mother peddled the book with no takers--so for most publishers, the suicide meant little as they declined to publish
and the book won a pulitzer---which means at least a few well-read folk thought highly of it.
catch22--yep--awesome book--segways to vonnegut and other black humorists from that era--i happily inhaled all of em
here's a shocker: i think ayn rand is mentally defective--but i love and inhaled all steinbeck--especially grapes of wrath and east of eden
but hey we all gon read through our unique filters..........
what about capote--in cold blood?? breakfast at tiffany's (speaking of black humor)??
weird list--a mix of solid lit, and lotsa garbage too
sadly i read few books these days--tons of good longreads, but i dont seem to have staying power for books--hope is that, when i retire, and move to a less frenetic life pace, i will find my way back--cant imagine life without reading
altho check out audm--6 bux a month for tons of quailty long read journo, read aloud---painfully slow compared to reading, but if you can only listen, they are great
also check out texture--6 bux a month for just about any magazine you can imagine--works on any internet-connected device---i subscribe with guilt---worries me that i am helping do to writers what has been done with musicians via the spotify's of our world
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I haven't tried audm. Thanks for the suggestion. Ayn does seem a tad past eccentric and her philosophy has glaring flaws still I find her novels enjoyable. Her infatuation with capitalism and subsequent attempts to construct a literary free trade utopia are not only abstractly insightful but also proved influential in creating the US economic policies (Greenspan was a follower) that promoted the current global trade structures and prompted the great recession.
Catch 22 and Vonnegut (all) are awesome. I'm still interested in Confederacy of Dunces, if I ever finish Born Again Pagan that is.
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I try to read fiction about once a year after seeing lists like that, but after a few pages I remember why I don't like it. I have read quite a few from that list due to being forced to in school. My problem with fiction is I don't read books from the start--I just read random pages until I've hit most of them, so I don't know who anyone is for quite a while. So for fiction I just go back to reading Sherlock Holmes for the twentieth or so time. One novel I actually finished recently was The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, which I read only because I heard he'd based the characters on his own family, and his brother was a neighbor of mine (and pretty clearly one of the book's characters).
I'm reading Miles Davis' autobiography now--not fiction so that s%$t won't ever make any f%$#$%g list. That book is a m%^*&$f&^%$r.
LOL, sounds like you just described Keith Richards "Life", a great m%^*&$f&^%$ing book.
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"So What" is a pretty good biography of Mile Davis. Those books are edited by lawyers so nobody who is living can sue over issues, so seldom complete until the person is dead for at least 60 years.
I thought it was interesting that Ciciley Tyson claimed he covered up that he had AIDS. I just listened to a vinyl record of his last public performance two years before he died "Miles Davis Live Around the World" two days ago at my audio big rig in Pleasanton.
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I do love Miles Davis. Music to drive along highway one by. Reggie Lucas just died. Who is going to replace these guys? Who is going to ever sing a song like Ella. When your life sucks you have two choices--Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald. They've both saved me. That sounds dramatic, and it is, but it's also true. I'm listening to So What. Fuuuck.
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I try to read fiction about once a year after seeing lists like that, but after a few pages I remember why I don't like it. I have read quite a few from that list due to being forced to in school. My problem with fiction is I don't read books from the start--I just read random pages until I've hit most of them, so I don't know who anyone is for quite a while. So for fiction I just go back to reading Sherlock Holmes for the twentieth or so time. One novel I actually finished recently was The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, which I read only because I heard he'd based the characters on his own family, and his brother was a neighbor of mine (and pretty clearly one of the book's characters).
I'm reading Miles Davis' autobiography now--not fiction so that s%$t won't ever make any f%$#$%g list. That book is a m%^*&$f&^%$r.
LOL, sounds like you just described Keith Richards "Life", a great m%^*&$f&^%$ing book.
I listened to Life. What a great book. I would have liked to hang out with Keith but if I had I'd be dead. Going to have to order So What. I like this thread--thank you Ma'am.
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I do love Miles Davis. Music to drive along highway one by. Reggie Lucas just died. Who is going to replace these guys? Who is going to ever sing a song like Ella. When your life sucks you have two choices--Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald. They've both saved me. That sounds dramatic, and it is, but it's also true. I'm listening to So What. Fuuuck.
I'm going to try So What next. The one I'm reading now is Miles: The Autobiography. I'm also a big fan. I live on Miles Street and just painted Miles on our carport, just subtly. I figure 1 out of 50 people will see it, 1 out of 50 of those will know who it is, and 1 out of 50 of those will notice it's on Miles St.
I just listened to Sinatra: The Chairman (the biography).
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I read "Miles" autobiography before "So What". That's a good sequence in terms of one filling in the other.
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Hey Bill, I get your issue with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the other Narnia books, but they're still really powerful books. I've been teaching them for years, and kids get very involved with them. I still am moved by some of the sections, and I'm far past kid age.
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I do love Miles Davis. Music to drive along highway one by. Reggie Lucas just died. Who is going to replace these guys? Who is going to ever sing a song like Ella. When your life sucks you have two choices--Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald. They've both saved me. That sounds dramatic, and it is, but it's also true. I'm listening to So What. Fuuuck.
I'm going to try So What next. The one I'm reading now is Miles: The Autobiography. I'm also a big fan. I live on Miles Street and just painted Miles on our carport, just subtly. I figure 1 out of 50 people will see it, 1 out of 50 of those will know who it is, and 1 out of 50 of those will notice it's on Miles St.
I just listened to Sinatra: The Chairman (the biography).
Very cool. Nice Wisteria too.... :)
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mike
1) my wife reads like you--and she's chroniuc high-volume reader and a phd'ed writer of many books herself--one of few people i accept is simply much smarter than I
2) awesome wisteria! my lord, the flowers look edible--and the miles silhouette is excellent too, he's playing through the wisteria!
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Surprised this isn't on the list:
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Hey Bill, I get your issue with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the other Narnia books, but they're still really powerful books. I've been teaching them for years, and kids get very involved with them. I still am moved by some of the sections, and I'm far past kid age.
My major issue is that they get progressively preachier. I avoid zealots of any flavor, and it's particularly irritating to me to be enjoying the storyline of a book and find it to be the bait for a religious hook.
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Aside from me having an opinion 180 degrees from Pono on Narnia, (I attribute this to him being a born-again, spirit filled atheist zealot ;)), I'd also agree that this list is several shades beyond kooky. First of all, there are a host of non-American authors in it, so even the title gums up the list before I even get started. Why strap nationality to the title at all?
50 shades... oh be serious.
Jean Auel's novels were 55 shades of something long before the pyramids were built.
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To be an atheist I'd have to have some kind of actual working opinion on religion. My only belief is a firm belief that I don't believe in belief.
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Hey Bill, I get your issue with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the other Narnia books, but they're still really powerful books. I've been teaching them for years, and kids get very involved with them. I still am moved by some of the sections, and I'm far past kid age.
My major issue is that they get progressively preachier. I avoid zealots of any flavor, and it's particularly irritating to me to be enjoying the storyline of a book and find it to be the bait for a religious hook.
My wife had two books on her shelf before we married that I just happened to pick up and read. One was Olaf Stapledon's "Starmaker" and Konrad Lorenz "On Aggression". Although you might regard "Starmaker" as a book on the universe and deity of sorts, framed in science fiction, it is beautifully written and more about the philosophy of meaning. "On Aggression" is about animal behavior, which, surprise, is just as much in it's own way about human behavior.
Both of these books really influenced the way I looked at things at the time.
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I stared at my navel a lot pondering the meaning of grok as the bong burnt down....does that count?
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To be an atheist I'd have to have some kind of actual working opinion on religion. My only belief is a firm belief that I don't believe in belief.
I believe you're correct with your belief.
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I stared at my navel a lot pondering the meaning of grok as the bong burnt down....does that count?
Only if a seed popped and hit you in the eye and you have the scar to prove it.
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To be an atheist I'd have to have some kind of actual working opinion on religion. My only belief is a firm belief that I don't believe in belief.
I believe you're correct with your belief.
I'm calling BS. You've studied quantum physics but haven't considered the nature of infinity, creation, identity, time?
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Sure, doesn't mean I think I really understand it. Besides, space and time might be just a local expression of gravity, there's probably no such thing as infinity and creation just means this particular universe has the particular tweaks in its constants the enable us to exist.
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If we really do exist.
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My only belief is a firm belief that I don't believe in belief.
well said--tho you describe a tough row to hoe--certainly worth trying.
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I know why Chan is calling bullshit--for one thing she knows me too well. And she knows I'll argue about almost anything and take either side. But I really don't believe in belief. To me, that presupposes that there is no evidence that will sway your opinion. The more I learn, especially about complex things like Physics, but really about anything, the more I realize the limitations of my understanding. I'm really always prepared to surrender any position, not because I'm wishy-washy, but simply because I've had fundamental concepts overturned far too many times to invest in belief. I'm willing to think something is true barring evidence to the contrary, but believe? Nope.
I spent a lot of time on string theory, trying to understand the intricacies and upgrading my math to try to follow some of the basic concepts. Then the large hadron collider found only one Higgs boson--pretty cool that they actually found that, but supersymmetry is kind of toast, because there should have been a lot more at about the same energy. Well, not dead, might be true, and might be revived sooner or later with revisions, but right now, string and M theory are back burner, it's Loop Quantum Gravity that gets all the attention.
Loop Quantum Gravity implies a limit to how small anything can be. There are no singularities, no dimensionless point with infinite energy density. Not at the heart of a black hole, and not during the big bang. That screws up a lot of notions of the nature of space, time and matter.
If something as basic as that is wiggling around, then what do we really know?
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I share your views on almost all points, with one small (or large) exception I believe that accepting infinity as a necessary condition of time is more rational than not. Now I'm going to have to add Loop Quantum Gravity lit to my future reading, if I can find one written in layman's terms that is.
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I share your views on almost all points, with one small (or large) exception I believe that accepting infinity as a necessary condition of time is more rational than not. Now I'm going to have to add Loop Quantum Gravity lit to my future reading, if I can find one written in layman's terms that is.
Well that's easy enough: Reality Is Not What It Seems -- Carlo Rovelli. Get it as an audio book, the guy who does the reading does a fine job. His ability with accents is quite good--so much so that it's not noticeable at first.
Time is probably an emergent property of gravity that just seems to exist in a continuum from our macro viewpoint. We certainly already know that it's relative. Infinity is a mathematical notion that might have no physical analog. It may be true that nothing can be divided infinitely, that everything has a minimum size, including the geometry of space itself, and very likely time as well. Likewise there might be a maximum size for everything, no infinite universe. Very big, like 10 to the 500th power bigger than the Planck scale, but not infinite. There's a fundamental difference in implication between very big or very small and infinite.
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OK...now this is getting serious. You mean this all really could be just God playing a video game? I wish he had given my character abs.
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If the universe is all encompassing and if it has a start date (13 Billion or so) and an area (even if the area is expanding) what is the current thought on nothing? Is nothing what is thought to have existed prior to the universe or outside of its area?
This is good - https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/before-big-bang.htm
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If the universe is all encompassing and if it has a start date (13 Billion or so) and an area (even if the area is expanding) what is the current thought on nothing? Is nothing what is thought to have existed prior to the universe or outside of its area?
Could "nothing" in this case, just be a fancy, tricky, scientific term for "I don't know" or "it's unknowable"?
That's what I've always thought. Put it in the "Nothing file".
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But I really don't believe in belief. To me, that presupposes that there is no evidence that will sway your opinion. The more I learn, especially about complex things like Physics, but really about anything, the more I realize the limitations of my understanding. I'm really always prepared to surrender any position, not because I'm wishy-washy, but simply because I've had fundamental concepts overturned far too many times to invest in belief. I'm willing to think something is true barring evidence to the contrary, but believe? Nope.
I'd say you're the Pope of "...perhaps" :DOK...now this is getting serious. You mean this all really could be just God playing a video game? I wish he had given my character abs.
He not only gave you abs, but surrounded them with the "Waistcoat of Hydrothermal Insulation", which, if I'm not mistaken is a +5 to gravitational pull. ;)
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"God's Cook Book Recipe One:
The Universe Ingredients
~73% Dark Energy
~23% Dark Matter
~3% Free Hydrogen and Helium
~0.5% Stars
~0.3% Neutrinos
~0.2% Space Junk
Directions: Mix together in three spatial dimensions. Wait 13.74 billion years. Brag to Odin. Watch him take the credit. Cry about it."
Stolen from Zarnaxus Meson
As close to a condensed working answer on the components of everything and nothing that I've seen and still not much closer to complete knowledge of either than Aristotle was over 2300 years ago.
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Yeah, so you'd like Carlo Rovelli, Chan, lots of appropriate props to ancient Greeks as clear thinkers and adept thought experimenters, though they didn't like to get their hands dirty. Also a certain reverence for italian poets like Dante Alighieri for philosophical thought that comes kind of close to the structure posited by loop quantum gravity for spacetime.
Right now I'm reading "Three Roads To Quantum Gravity" by Lee Smolin. Good stuff, though very confusing. He casually says the universe is really much bigger than 14 billion lightyears across but doesn't really explain WTF he's talking about. Infers that the 14 billion light years that we can experience is just the region we're restricted to since nothing can travel faster than light, and the big bang happened 14 billion years ago, so all that we can experience or see regardless of what tool we might use is 14 billion years worth. I'm having a tough time with this. It sort of makes sense and might account for the clearly much greater mass of the universe and give a real clue to what dark matter and dark energy really are (ordinary stuff we just can't experience), but I've never heard this anywhere else and it's slippery.
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and now sterile neutrinos are coming along and mucking up the works.
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I don't think anyone trying to model the structure and origin of the universe thinks that a big bounce origin answers the question "what comes before". At best it just moves the goalposts. Since time is tied so strongly with gravity it doesn't really exist prior to expansion or at least doesn't change. If there isn't a quantum limit to singularities--in other words, if the big bang started from a dimensionless point of infinite energy and mass, then time increments are infinitely small--i.e., doesn't progress. More directly, we can measure how time slows near a mass. At the event horizon of a black hole time nearly stops. This isn't some arm-waving theory, it's as solidly tested as any theory can be--we just exist where the macro properties provide our view of reality--which has little to do with "real" reality. There isn't even any reality to euclidian geometry. Mass warps space. The right angle corners you perceive on your desk are actually warped by your presence to something other than 90 degrees. We just can't detect that at our lumpy size without special experiments.
In a quantum gravity theory of the big bang, time and space don't exist at all prior to expansion since they are emergent properties of gravity. A limit to how small the singularity can be posits something existing "before" the singularity. The notion of a singularity emerging spontaneously works best with a dimensionless singularity. Ignoring all the math and theory, a dimensionless point is nothing, and we can imagine it originating from nothing. An origin with a minimum size is "something" and it's tougher to visualize it emerging from nothing.
Nothing really new in all this, just better math and more people looking at a way to reconcile relativity and quantum theory. The biggest challenge is that under relatively, points in space don't exist--the only meaning they have is as relationships of the three sets of gravitational field lines. In Quantum theory points have meaning, if only as the intersection of electromagnetic field lines. So the fundamental underpinnings are incompatible and need something external to reconcile them. Like a tuttle to plate adapter, only cosmic.
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I'm rereading a fantastic book that probably will never make a list like this. Reality Is Not What It Seems -- Carlo Rovelli. This is the second time I've read it and I've listened to the audible version twice. After the second listening, I decided I needed to reread so important points didn't fly by while I was distracted (as if that ever happens). Highly recommended. Yeah, okay, it's about loop quantum gravity, but it's absurdly well written if a little repetitive. Poetry about physics. I realized that the repetition is intentional, aimed at taking a slightly different slice at important concepts.
Wow, I just did a google search to see what came up about this book and found that NPR did a review. It reads like a much longer version of what I just wrote. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/02/01/512798209/reality-is-not-what-we-can-see
Just got around to reading Rovelli. Highly recommended is an understatement. I will likely read nothing else but Rovelli this year, or years, however long it takes.