2.20.2006

What we're reading

Recently completed and highly recommended:
Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics :Anthropomorphized astral detritis tells the story of the origin of the cosmos. Trippy and engaging.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities: As Marco Polo describes the world to Kublai Khan, it becomes apparent that Polo has only ever been to one place.
Jose Saramago, Blindness: Vision helps to maintain our connection as a society to each other and our individual selves. What would happen if we were all blind? This book deserved the Nobel Prize it won.

In progress, perhaps more comments later:
Umberto Eco, On Literature (for the philosopher-critic in all of us)
Paul Auster, City of Glass (too new to comment)
(Many authors) Neurobiology of the Neurotrophins (NOT recommended)
John Searle, Consciousness and Language (tentatively recommended)

Currently running alarmingly low on books to read, but have luckily been swamped with coursework and experiments. Thank God I'm in graduate school.

2 comments:

AllThingsSpring said...

I'll completely concur on Italo Calvino. His stuff is worth reading. I just picked up Invisible Cities actually.

Also working on Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier, Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe by Christopher T. Hill, The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose, Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig, Freethinkers by Susan Jacoby, The Three Pillars of Zen by Phillip Kapleau, Science & Sanity by Korzbyski, Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Collins Classics S.) by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Paine : Collected Writings : Common Sense / The Crisis / Rights of Man / The Age of Reason / Pamphlets, Articles, and Letters (Library of America) by Thomas Paine, The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition by Lewis Carroll, The Complete Works (Everyman's Library, 259) by Michel De Montaigne, Thomas Jefferson : Writings : Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters (Library of America) by Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson : Essays and Lectures (Library of America) by Ralph Waldo Emerson, His Dark Materials Trilogy 'Northern Lights', 'the Subtle Knife', 'the Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, Francis Bacon by Weiland Schmeid, Ideal Cities by Ruth Eaton, Marriage: A History by Stephanie Coontz, Beowulf : A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney, The Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll, Complete Poetry and Fiction of Edgar Allen Poe, Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, finished The Systems Bible by John Gall.

I also have about 2000 other books in my library I'm working on. Let me know if you need to borrow anything, Nerdwife...

Pernox said...

I am currently reading:

the back of the cereal box
The Shiva Option by David Weber (pulp, gooey sci-fi mindless stuff)
The Bush Dyslexicon by Mark Crispin Miller
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
Silence on the Wire (can't remember the author)