The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo is a murder mystery that is set in Sweden and deals with some serious psychopaths similar to the movie 7. I cannot say that I would recommend this book necessarily. It is a little too dark, and not well written enough, and there is no real substance, theme or message to it. It is, in a word, a kind of pulp. Maybe a good book to pass a voyage or plane ride, where you don't want to think much, but that is all.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a novel which, like most of McCarthy's novel, explores the root of human nature via dramatic landscape and desolate environment. In this case the book shows us the relationship of a boy and son in a post-apocalyptic world and how they struggle to find the meaning of existence when the future of human life on earth is questionable. The writing is excellent as always, and the nature of the novel is somewhat dark, but still a thrill and thought provoking. I highly recommend this book, but maybe start with Blood Meridian or All the Pretty Horses if you have not read McCarthy before.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The picture of Dorian Gray presents a snapshot of a time of British nobility and opulence, well captured and obviously admired by Oscar Wilde's disposition. In the novel the recklessness, vanity, and weakness of Dorian Gray is captured by his portrait which ages and suffers for his conscious. The portrait indeed contains his soul and thus the reflection of it torments Dorian who has not lived a life of virtue. The story present a clear picture that people do have souls and that standing up for what is right and noble is food to keep the soul young always.

This book is a classic, the writing impeccable, the thoughts fantastical.

"Often... he would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and ageing face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead, or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age"

Sweet Mandarin by Helen Tse

Sweet Mandarin is a true life story of 3 generations of Chinese and how they made their living in the restaurant business. I found the story inspiring, showing the pleasure of hard work and accomplishment. Despite this, I also found elements of the story to be a bit cliched in the sense of the "immigrant struggle". This is unfortunate, since the struggle is real and people who immigrate and start business deserve massive praise.

I recommend this book for people who want to have a peek behind the Chinese restaurant owners world, and how their values are transferred down the generations.

It is also a book which connects England and Hong Kong and contains some history of both places. I enjoyed that aspect after my recent trip to Hong Kong, the city of business, without a doubt.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief is a masterfully written novel with beautiful/childlike descriptions and similes everywhere. It will want to make you be a child again and to appreciate the beauty of everything around you. It is a heartfelt story about death, a little girl, and the power of words. I strongly recommend it.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go is a well written novel by Kazuo Ishiguro who leads the reader to conclusions with the minimum of detail and seems to have a cap on all the minutia of human interaction.

The novel to me centers around a satire within a satire. The first one being that cloned humans who are created for the purpose of donating organs are subhuman, born into the world without reason, and bound to an unavoidable fate of donating organs till they die. I kept on wondering in my head why the characters didn't just try to make a run for it and escape their fate, till I remembered their whole situation paralleled the human condition with death. How as the use of technology grows in our society we are all becoming dehumanized. Or trans-humanized if you will. Anyway, it was a surprisingly deep novel. I strongly recommend it.

The Disapearance of Childhood by Neil Postman

In the disapearance of childhood Neil Postman makes the argument that the differences between adults and children are disappearing due to the following factors:

1. Children wearing adult clothing, adults wearing children's clothing, like jeans, sneakers etc..


2. T.V. bringing adult themes and education to children without them having to learn to read or to think critically about the messages. This same phenomenon "dumbs" adults down to the level of children.


3. As more information is coming from t.v., games, and the radio, school is losing its importance as the "fountain head" of intellectual engagement.


4. Childhood is itself a new concept, which started around the time formal schools were created. Around the 1300s-1600s.

I found the book quite engaging and interesting, and find it difficult to believe Postman wrote it in 1982 and it remains so accurate. One point he made about learning new languages returning us to a childlike state of dependence and simplicity I really liked. And he suggests that computers will keep everyone in a child like state since they stress perpetual learning, especially of new languages as in programming languages. I think he is right on the mark!

wikiquote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Postman

Google Scholar goes Legal

Google Scholar now indexes U.S. laws and court decisions. W00T!

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/finding-laws-that-govern-us.html

Scholarly. FTW.

Like what?

Totally like whatever, you know?
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

See it on vimeo.

How Doth The Crocodile

From Alice in Wonderland:

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

----------------------
From Wikipedia:

"How Doth the Little Crocodile" is a parody of the moralistic poem "Against Idleness And Mischief" by Isaac Watts[1] (Alice was originally trying to recite that). Watts' poem begins "How doth the little busy bee," and uses a bee as a model of hard work. In Carroll's parody, the crocodile's corresponding "virtues" are deception and predation, themes which recur throughout Alice's adventures in both books, and especially in the poems.

Against Idleness And Mischief - Isaac Watts

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!

How skilfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.

In works of labour or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.

In books, or work, or healthful play,
Let my first years be passed,
That I may give for every day
Some good account at last.

Too Damn Cool

OK, this is just too cool. It is a chart which shows the relative size of cells, viruses, atoms, etc. Just move the slider to zoom in!

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/


:-)

Traveler by Ron McClarty

Traveler is a heart felt novel about a struggling actor rediscovering his home town and what happened to everyone after highschool. It is the kind of story which flashes between the past and present, and which illuminates the interesting contrast of how everyone's life looks so bright when they leave highschool, to the reality of what actually happens.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning is an epic and the essential therapy book for modern times. Frankl asserts, correctly, that with the growing use of automation man's free time has expanded leaving us plenty of leisure hours to contemplate our own meaning.

Frankl asserts that almost anything can have meaning and it is all up to our attitude. A survivor of several concentration camps, Frankl attests how much choosing the right attitude and having something to live forr saved people's lives in the camps. Attitude and spirit had a lot to do with survival.

This leads Frankl to suggest that man finds meaning through suffering as well as through joy and love. Very true, how often do people put the cause or cross in their life for what they are living as the meaning in their lives, and how often would they be lost without their jobs/families/possestions/causes etc... for which they sacrifice all and for which they create their identity.

More than that, people can capitalize on the little injustices in life as a growth experience. The person who cut you off in traffic, the guy at work who just loves taking pot shots at you. These are all times to exercise forgiveness and be the best person you can be. You have the choice to remain calm and be good and not let useless anger consume your life.

This is a must read for anyone feeling lost in their lives.

Wikipedia entry (with quotes):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

I had not read a C.S. Lewis novel before, and as I was looking up quotes from him I was quite struck by the Christian element in his writing.

And so Till We Have Faces appears to be a book quite a lot about faith, but in a new way, in that is doesn't just endorse blind faith as a way of life, but tries to show how it can help people deal with the trials and injustices of life. The book itself is based on the story of Cupid and Psyche.

Silent Prayer is my greatest Weapon

- Mahatma Gandhi

Lest there be any confusion, I myself am agnostic, yet after reading this book I am seriously considering taking up some form of belief and faith, just because it helps sweep so much unnecessary guilt/fretting/worrying under the rug. How helpful it is to believe something greater is working for you, that is what every human needs. And that is what this book shows.

On Intelligence - Jeff Hawkins

Jeff Hawkins is the founder of the palm pilot and invested a large portion of his wealth in an institute where he studies how the brain works. In On Intelligence Jeff suggests that the brain functions on memory, sequences, and prediction. This is why people can recognize a person after they have had a haircut, but a computer can't.

The Wikipedia article on the book explains it better than I could. I will say that the book was not too technically demanding, and while I did get lost at some places, most of the time I followed the material. Jeff has invented a lot of great analogies to visualize the concepts he is outlining. It is a good read to understand some past work on artificial intelligence, and how the brain works, as well as were the science might be heading...

Born Standing Up - Steve Martin

Born standing up is an autobiography of how Steve Martin broke into show business and became a comedy star. You always hear of stars living in their cars and feeling lonely on the road but Steve makes it vivid. He really shows how as a young man in his 20s he faced down his parent's advice to get a straight job and pushed through to success. It took a ton of work, to be sure. I am trying to make a go of it in publishing and entertainment now myself, and I can honestly say, it is a lot of work.

Steve also had a great way of showing how little accidental things in his life turned into great material. That really appealed to me since it is often not that which we do deliberately that has the biggest impact on our lives.

In closing I just read an Emerson quote that I think sums the book, and Steve's adventure to stand up, well:

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

The Genome War by James Shreeve

After reading the biography of Craig Venter which featured the race to sequence the human genome, I then read the Genome War to get an unbiased account, and possibly more information.

I do think that the genome war provides both, and gives a lot more background information of all the key players including those who worked for Venter and those who worked for the other side with the Human Genome Project. I learned of several new business men, and several new papers published at the time which I will follow up on. Particularly those which deals with all the new computer science, bioinformatics if you will, which was founded at the time.

As a final note I will say that Venter's account of the war is better written and easier to understand. Had I not read Venter's book first, this whole book would have made much less sense.

My Life Decoded by Craig J. Venter

If you want a book that will blow your mind while spelling out what exactly is "biotechnology" and how it all came into being than this is the book for you. Venter is a controversial figure indeed, as is anyone who has huge ambitions and actually carries them out.

No matter where you stand on the "Gene wars", I can't recommend this book enough. Venter's account is personal, detailed, and compelling. You can tell he is a guy who genuinely cares about the science, and cares about changing the world.

I think this youtube video does a pretty good job of capturing some of what you can expect to read.

Model Behavior by Jay McInerney

Model Behavior is a novel which gives us the inside look of what an artists life might be like living in New York City. The narrator and hero of the story is a "casualty of privilege" trying to make a living as a celeb magazine writer --which he hates-- while also patching together a relationship with a model.

I found the book interesting for its fast paced dialogue that was often viperous or alluded to irony. These weren't idiots talking. And it was clearly a world that McInerney knows and is bringing to us.

When the novel ended, I felt happy, like I knew what it would be like living the high social life in New York city, and that I wasn't really missing that much...maybe more a factor of my current age than anything though.

We Yes You No