thursday, july 19, 2007
I won’t finish them all, but here they are
These are books I brought with me to read this summer:
I got Invisible Cities a while ago, thinking that I should try something by Italo Calvino other than If on a winter’s night a traveler, which I didn’t enjoy much, but I read a few pages of this one and didn’t get into it either — probably because I hadn’t been properly initiated into postmodernism yet. If I enjoy reading Invisible Cities with the power of my college-acquired literary skills, I’ll try to read If on a winter’s night a traveler again.
I’m halfway through The Architecture of Happiness; I’ve been reading it on off and on since my dad gave it to me several months ago. I like it. Alain de Botton ties together several things I’m interested in — industrial design, architecture, evolutionary psychology — and he makes it entertaining without being either dumbed-down or terribly exciting. I got interested in the book because Henry Petroski reviewed it positively; I’ve read a bunch of his books and learned a lot about design from them.
I’ve already consumed much of The Total Library, both for the Borges class I took last quarter (taught by one of the book’s translators!) and independently, but this collection is so big that there is always more of Borges’ crotchety-old-geek nonfiction to read.
See Invisible Cities above for why If on a winter’s night a traveler is in the stack.
Sky in a Bottle explains why the sky is blue and the historical process of figuring that out. My dad gave me this for my birthday a few years ago and I read partway through it. It’s neat, but I haven’t picked it up again.
I bought The Emigrants last year because I loved another of W. G. Sebald’s books, The Rings of Saturn, which I read first for fun and later for a great class. I haven’t started this one yet, but it might be assigned for one of the classes I’m taking this fall so I figure I should try reading it before then.
My dad gave me Skin: A Natural History for my birthday this year because I like scientific literary nonfiction and I was into the single-subject gimmick for a while: a book about oranges, a book about blood, a book about pencils, etc. I’m hoping this will be like an extension of the amazing chapter about skin in my high school physiology book, which made me understand how cuts heal.
I got I Am A Strange Loop for my birthday too, because I read Gödel, Escher, Bach several years ago and loved it like many people do when they read it at the right time — before they already know a lot about the ideas that Hofstadter brings up. So, I may or may not like this book, depending on how much I learn from it.
My sisters and I grew up in bookstores and libraries poking around the children’s books, waiting for our English-professor dad to stop browsing and just buy his five or eight books already. Now I find myself sneaking into bookstores and libraries knowing how to use them, and he annoys us in other ways.
comments (4)
I hate to do this to you and/or to the memory of one of my very favorite books. But I persist -- http://tinyurl.com/3a6c3o
– Brian on 7/19/2007 20:25:38
I've also just bought _Strange Loop_ and so far it's fairly good -- less plain theory and more introspection of a life.
– travis on 7/19/2007 22:44:38
Have you read "t zero"? That's some dope Calvino.
– 31d1 on 7/20/2007 06:03:26
Yeah, "Cosmicomics" + "t zero" is about as good as it gets, ultra recommended.
– Brian on 7/20/2007 06:42:02
