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the things i've read...

I have not posted any of my readings in some time. I read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves about a year ago, it seems, probably longer. However, I have been reading, just not writing about it. I recently started using Ta-Da List, a nice little Ruby on Rails (if you're savvy) application that is a free and easy way to make to-do lists. I've never been a fan of writing down to-do lists, but this is just so damn easy and there's no paper involved. So I inventoried all the books on my bookshelf that are un- or partially-read. Turns out there's quite a few. I've posted the Book List, and opened it out to the public - it's easier to update the list than this blog, where I would feel compelled to actually put some thought in to my words surrounding a particular reading, instead of just clicking the checkbox when I'm done. I've just finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which I highly recommend to anyone who ever, for five minutes or more, liked comics. As for the rest of the lot, well, I can't say I'm terribly proud of all the books that have found their way onto my shelf. Nonetheless, I press forward, reading, reading, reading. Cheers friends, to literature!

Posted May 25, 2006 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

A recent commenter has prompted my to log in my most recent novel endeavor (get it? novel? ha, wait, it's non-fiction). Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a little book from across the pond written by a lady who was simply fed up with common misuses of punctuation. Apparently society has forgotten the true importance of the apostrophe; the grace brought to a senctence by a comma-pair. That lady is Lynne Truss, and she brings wit and humor into the mix with her excellent little book. Not only is it a fun read, it is a nice refresher for proper usage, albeit proper British usage. Either way, I particularly enjoy Truss' (who asserts it should be Truss's) opinions when it comes to certain enigmatic usages: if you are John Updike, you can get away with gross misuse of a comma; if you are not famous, stick to the rules or be pummeled by the editor of your work. She digresses that punctuation is somewhat subjective these days and its usage often comes down to the author's style. As for the mysterious title: well, read the book jacket to find out.

Posted March 01, 2005 at 06:28 PM | Comments (2)

Several years ago I read about a young man named Jonathan Safran Foer in Rolling Stone. He appeared in the "People of the Year" issue as one of the hot authors of the year. The recommendation about his novel, Everything Is Illuminated, was enough to get me into a Barnes & Noble and buy a copy of the book. And so it sat on my bookshelf, for some time.

Lately, a recurrence of desire to read has struck me, and so I've started pulling unread or partially read books off my shelf and diving into them. Let me just say that the recommendation was a good one. Everything Is Illuminated is hands-down one of the funniest yet most serious, oddly yet beautifully written books I've ever read.

The novel centers around our hero, the author, and his odyssey to the Ukrainian Republic to find the place of his ancestors. Throw in a translator who speaks broken English, a driver who is blind, and a dog (the driver's "seeing-eye bitch") named Sammy Davis Junior, Junior, and you have quite a tale unfolding in the Ukranian countryside. Interwoven in to this fantastic voyage in modern times are the unusual tales surrounding the small schetl (read: hebrew word for town) are odd, touching, appauling, and ridiculous. The result: a mixed narrative as serious as it is hilarious. A great read.

Update:
I just finished it, and let me reiterate how excellent and moving this novel is. I recommend you read it. Yes, you.

Posted February 01, 2005 at 02:02 PM | Comments (2)

I picked up the non-fiction Everything and More: A compact history of infinity almost a year ago, and for a while, was fighting to stay interested in it's mind-boggling topic. Dealing with early concepts of infinity and the human mind, stretching all the way back to the most ancient societies, author David Foster Wallace spins his id with a slew of concepts with rather excellent practical examples. Ideas of the the infinite - both small and large, have been around since early philosophers like Aristotle tackled them. They were nay sayers as well, Pythagoras and his followers for example, and it goes from there. My favorite part had to be the rennaissance and industrial revolution era musings by famous mathematicians such as Cauchy, Gauss, and Fourier, whose work would later be solidified by Cantor. It's particularly striking to me how these mathematicians had none of the sound theory that is taught in undergrad courses like Real Analysis. They simply had theories that seemed to work well, and went on from there.

Overall, the book is really quite good, and I think it would be a good addition to any math-type or philosophy-type's library who hasn't taken any math history. Extensive college math isn't required, as Wallace pain-stakingly adds little footnotes (denoted by the ubiquitous IYI - if you're interested) and emergency glossaries for the basics of some math concepts. The author's style and delivery are quite fresh, as it feels like he has just handed you his manuscript, with previous and later chapters at any point in the book being referred to as "above" and "below" respectively. There are also little apologies for overly-complex topics that can't be simplified any further, and things of this nature. There's a very intimate author-reader feel to the book, and thus is that much more accesible.

Posted November 16, 2004 at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

C&P is a fascinating tail of the human psyche, not to mention a psyche influenced by the extreme impovrishment of a poor man in Russia circa the 19th Century. This is my first book from one of the great Russian novelists, but with its magnificence and great attention to detail (which is so great that it occasionally seems to border on absurdity), it certainly won't be the last.

Posted August 20, 2004 at 02:56 AM | Comments (1)