Wed Aug 29, 2007
{What I'm Reading}
What I Read
Somewhere among the interwebs, I found a list of the top science-fiction novels of all time, as ranked by their readers. I'm not sure how I found time to do this, but I wanted to learn which ones I had read, so I made a spreadsheet out of the list. More...
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Sat Aug 04, 2007
{What I'm Reading}
Leadership
Since my "new" job two years ago, I've been reading management books, since I don't learn well from a demo. I recommend a series by Patrick Lencioni: Five Disfunctions of a Team, Death by Meeting, Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, and Five Temptations of a CEO, and Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars. But the best reference on how to be a leader that I've ever read is Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I had no idea what a genius Lincoln was. A friend told me that Goodwin wrote the book as a response to the current "president." Not a word invites this reflection, but the entire book is a rebuke, and the story is nearly impossible to put down. Only at the end did I regret picking it up, because I knew how it would end.
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Thu May 24, 2007
{What I'm Reading}
My Heroes
I may have told this story before, but I'll tell it again. When I decided that I would write for my college newspaper, liked it enough I thought I might be a journalist my entire life. And if I did, I hoped that I might interview two people: Douglas Hofstadter and Linus Pauling. Hafstadter because I was reading Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid that year; and Pauling because he was my favorite chemist. I was able to interview them both in my first quarter of writing for City on a Hill. More...
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Wed Jan 31, 2007
{What I'm Reading}
20 Rue Jacob
I'm reading "Wild Heart" a biography of Natalie Clifford Barney by Suzanne Rodriguez. I don't generally read biographies because I'm always so sad at the ending. But where I am now in the book Natalie is in her early 30s, and she has just moved to 20 rue Jacob on the Left Bank where she will live for the rest of her life. Behind the house was a small wooded lot, all that was left of forests which once covered the land where Paris grew, and theTemple of Friendship. More...
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Mon Sep 04, 2006
{What I'm Reading}
A Sense of the World by Jason Roberts
This morning I finished a book written by a friend from college, Jason Roberts: "A Sense of the World/How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler." More...
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Sun Aug 06, 2006
{What I'm Reading}
Physists Just Need One Miracle
There is a delightful interview with UCSC Physics Professor Bruce Rosenblum in today's Sentinal about his new book about quantum mechanics. I'll be reading it, I'm sure, but I'm not done with View from the Center of the Universe yet. (Let alone write about it. If it weren't for the g.d. day job I'd have already written my book report about it.) More...
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Sat Jun 24, 2006
{What I'm Reading}
Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy
Earlier this week we went to hear a Mellisa Etheridge concert in Oakland. As with most of her shows, she treated us to new interpretations of mostly her old songs, not too many of the new ones where she's happy yet politically aware. While hearing her sing "Bring Me Some Water", I remembered that when we first heard her in the mid-1980s, we thought she must be a lesbian because no woman sings like that about a man. Women may feel that way, but the artists who are allowed to record didn't ever sing about their men that way. More...
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Fri Jun 02, 2006
{What I'm Reading}
2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck
When I was in high school I was a born again christian. I was as interested in that religion and understanding its scripture as I have been in anything else I encountered in my life, so you can imagine the intellect that I brought to bible study. So much of what was taught was so obviously unbelievable that eventually the only perspective on christianity I could accept was that of C. S. Lewis and his Mere Christianity. Had I lived in another time, I would have been a Jesuit priest, and certainly a heretic in my heart. More...
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Fri May 26, 2006
{What I'm Reading}
Word Salad with Too Few Ingredients
This month's Harper's brings us an excerpt from a book called "Eunoia" where each of the five chapters uses a single vowel. The editors of Harper's wrote the tag headline "Tour de force." I find the publishing of "writing" like this an obscene waste. More...
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Sun May 14, 2006
{What I'm Reading}
Opal: A Life of Enchantment, Mystery, and Madness
I'm reading an odd book. In the tone of a woman scorned, Katherine Beck wrote a biography of the beloved and mysterious Opal Whitely . The author clearly believes that her subject is fraud and anyone who believes otherwise is a fool. But the most likely audience for this book are the people who are snidely addressed on nearly every page as "Opalites." No wonder I found it on the remainder table at Logos. More...
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