Books Reports of 2007
- Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Master and Margarita". This one was recommended by two different friends, both prolific readers, as one of their favorites. Unfortunately I couldn't get into it, but plugged on any way due to the power of recommendation. I just couldn't wrap my head around the carnival of very similar Russian names. The shifts in tone felt artificial, and the farce was more South Park than Nashville. Maybe I didn't connect with the satire of soviet life in the 30's.
- Pablo Neruda, "Twenty Poems of Love". It's as good as everyone says it is. Wouldn't you like to get done the way spring does to cherry trees?
- Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49". When Opedipa Maas arrives at Lot 49, I didn't cry. In fact, I didn't even care. Maybe innovative when it was published, at the height of LSD obsession, this book panders to the fragmented thinking of the habitual hallucinogenic drug-takers, and adolescents. It gives up character and plot, for endless digressions, which might be interesting if you never read any non-fiction, and embarrassingly trite, if you actually studied the the Second Law of Thermodynamics in college. Still, one can marvel at the inventiveness of the prose, at least on the paragraph level.
- Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month". This is a superbly entertaining set of essays about software development from a man who's been there and done that. I was surprised by the quality of the prose, it's clear that this book has become classic as much for the profundity of the insights, as for the mordant wit of the writing. True, a few of the pieces that pick apart the details of software development on the old mainframes, don't translate too well to today, but the bulk of the book provide lessons just as pertinent today as it did in 1975. It was surprising how much of modern "cutting-edge" software-development methodologies are preempted in this book.
- Thomas Parsons, "Introduction to Compiler Construction". This book has been on my being-read list for a while. Let's just say that computer science textbooks, even an introductory one, does not make for page-turning reading fun. Still I manage to struggle through and get the gist of compiler theory. My secret wish is that there will be some esoteric aspect of DNA transcription that may be illuminated by some simple application of parsing theory, like finding out that the DNA code specifically avoids left-recursion, or something like that. I am not sure if the book is so clear, for I had to read many passages several times before I got it. Maybe it's just that I always tried to read this book in the wee hours of the night when my concentration was at an ebb. In the end I didn't finish every chapter – there's only so much about assembly language that I want to know, and optimization, let's just say that it's premature.
- Martin Fowler, "Refactoring". If you code a lot, and you like your programs to have that nice clean shiny feel then you probably refactor already. Still, it's good to have names and reasons and rationales for the virtual house-cleaning that goes on, and there were plenty of new ways to clean code that I'd never thought of before. Why do women complain that men don't clean when all they have to do is look at the code?
- Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Cosmopolitanism". An ungainly word, Appiah resurrects the concept of cosmopolitanism to explore epistemological and ethical issues in our world of global heterogeneity. He pulls out ideas and concepts from urban philosophers throughout the ages, and tries to resolve paradoxes whenever we try to confront other cultures. It's a short book, and written in a somewhat dry academic flavor. However, the sprinkles of personal reminiscences of Appiah growing up in Ghana and England makes it an intriguing read. There are references to a variety of sources, from ancient greek, roman, ghanian thinkers. Overall, a gentle excursion over some of the conceptual tangles involved in living with a bunch of strangers.
- Paul Ekman, "Emotions Revealed" A thinly written book on what should be an enormously interesting subject. In the hopes of writing an accessible book, Ekman has drained all energy out of the narrative with a very simple-minded prose approach to his subject. Everything is. Explained. In. Exhaustively. Boring. Detail. And worse of all, he tries to turn it into a self-help book. I am afraid there's a lot more to life than the basic emotions. However, learning about the exact muscles in the expression of various emotions was fascinating, and I did learn of two new, fairly universal emotions, fiero (the emotion of achieving a difficult task) and nanches (the pleasure at watching your children succeed).
- Anthony Bourdain, "The Nasty Bits". A very uneven collection from the hilariously irreverent chef Anthony Bourdain. This man genuinely loves food and is armed with a arsenal of scathing put-downs. He is also capable of the occasionally profound reverie. Still, the magazine origins of most of the essays betray themselves, as he repeats the same anecdote in various essays, and no, reading about how ironic he feels about jetting around the world, eating, does not a rivetting hook to an essay make.
- David Lodge, "Trading Places" It's the proto-typical academic farce, as a staid and musty English professor trades places with a flamboyant lusty American professor. Manners are overturned and sex is on the cards. Is academia really like this? The book takes a while to set-up but moves irresistibly forward once the farce sets in. There is perhaps an overbearingly self-conscious tilt towards the humanities, but then this would mean that there is room for such a farce for the physical sciences, although imagining physics professors in sexapades with the typical physics students is a little bit off-putting, unless you can put Harry Potter in front of a Linear accelerator.
- Cicero, "Selected Writings". I learnt more than I wanted to about Roman jurisprudence. The letters were not particularly insightful. But the essay on old age is a veritable classic, and one can easily see why it has been again read for the last 2000 years. On Duty is a little bit thick and heavy, considering that the call of duty does not involve consideration of that thing we call slavery. Perhaps in the heat of a moral dilemna, this essay would have more force.
- William Clark, "Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University"
- Samuel Beckett, "Molloy" Beckett tries to out-Joyce Joyce, but in French. A delicious piece of nothingness, that shouldn't really be read in French if you don't understand French that well, which is what I did because when you kind of describe nothingness, it is in the how, and the what-not, and the meanings between the lines that makes it all worthwhile. One scene that i did remember was where the narrator moved the stones from one pocket of his jacet to another for a total of 16 times. Riveting.
- Orhan Pamuk, "Istanbul" I read this whilst touring Istanbul. How apropos, I thought. Even though he's won the Nobel, I'm beginning to suspect that Pamuk is not that great. Minus the exoticism, the Turkish detail, the structure of the prose is a little flabby. In the end, I was not all that rivetted by Pamuk's career as a failed painter. After all, I live in San Francisco where every barista is an artist moonlighting. But then, it is the details and the chronicler of one of the great civilisations that makes Pamuk great. I did learn about the Hüsün the quasi melancholy-regret that pervades all Istabullis, although the handful of Istanbullis that I asked whether they feel Hüsün, did not know what I was talking about. But once you open your eyes to the decay of the formerly great Ottoman empire, it is really easy to see.
- Iegor Gran, "ONG" Céci est l'un de meilleur roman comique que j'ai lu. En fait, j'ai du le recherché encore, pendant ma dernière visite à L'Europe parce que j'ai perdu mon copie original dont me manque terriblement. C'était un satire acidique. Bien sur, le auto-égard des travailleurs de N.G.O. est un cible énorme, et je suis un peu étonnant qu'il n y pas en plus de satire que d'y viser.
- William Strauss and Neil Howe, "The Fourth Turning" Best book on history I've read in years. My head is still spinning from it. It's the kind of book that makes me look at everything completely differently. This is why I read.
- Drew Westen, "The Political Brain". A reasonably interesting political analysis of the Republican/Democrat divide with a loose grounding in science. Basically the message is that emotion is the most fundamental currency in politics, especially for presedential campaigns. Some cogent analyses of previous presidential campaigns of both winners and losers. Some tid-bits that were good: in debate, some challenges were character attacks, and emotionally, they should be treated as such, and the only plausible emotional defense is to attack back (the way to a Southern heart); negative campaign is not bad, all the greats did it, Lincoln, Kennedy, Roosevelt, Reagan. Body language, non-verbal stuff is crucial. Apparently the top four motivations for voters, upon extensive research is 1) Does the party have principles and values that I like? 2) Does the candidate make me feel anything? 3) Do I believe the candidate? and a distant fourth 4) Does the policy positions please me? Westen emphasizes the use of stories (I like that) in order to convey emotions, values and attack the opponent implicitly. The case studies are superb, and it would seem that Bob Shrum is probably the most campaign manager of all time. Bring back Carville (I did at least find him entertaining on NBC).
- Anthony Lane, "Nobody's Perfect". Exhausting. I've just read 10 years worth of New Yorker of movie reviews. There's something choppy about reading a endless stream of movie reviews, or basically, a set of essays. We jump from topic to topic, with nary a conjunctive propellant. But still, I maintain that Anthony is the most elegant prose stylist living. He snarks well, he turns polished phrase, and he's quite happy to slide into a topic sideways. As he, above all, tries to be entertaining, he'll look for the most incongruous but just metaphor to flavour his writing. That said, he can praise a movie or book generously as he sees fit. He is not a bitter man. But I am glad I'm done, so now I can enjoy his prose every month or so in the New Yorker instead of a monolithic blast.