Summer Reading Pile
I need an extra summer to get to these.
Almost done with Shooter by Jack Coughlin and others. It's not terrible, but mis-advertised and not as interesting as I had hoped. I wanted to read the autobiography of a marine sniper because I like understanding the psychology of people in extreme situations, but this book doesn't touch on psychology as much as it should/could. I'm reading about a lot of dying and killing here. Enough. Let's move on.
The pile is too big for the next month, but it's an interesting pile. In no particular order (yet):
- All This Heavenly Glory by Betsy. I'm 6 months late on this, so it's time to read. Then I'll ask her to sign the book. Looking forward to it.
- Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Smart people who think write about things that need to be thought about.
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. A best seller that word-of-mouth has on my radar.
- Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. A psychology professor put this on my radar.
- Alaska by James Michener. My Mom put this on my radar after my trip to the real Pacific northwest earlier this year. A nice idea, but the 1,000 page heft has me wary to crack the book.
- Lying on the Couch by Irivin Yalom. Well-regarded psychology fiction written by a renowned psychologist.
- Flow and Creativity, both by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I've read half of the first and it's freakin' brilliant. It's psychology stuff that addresses "The Psychology of Optimal Experience". Who wouldn't want that?
- The Trial by Franz Kafka. This has been in the pile for over three years. Think I'll ever actually read it?
I have others in the pile, but it's really a second pile. At some point I'm gonna have to move the second pile to a third pile and split up some of the first pile into a second pile.
If only I could read more efficiently while watching TV.
posted by Teodoro Callate @ 8:02 AM
26 comments
26 Comments:
Sweet, thanks for the publicity, T! Look forward to what you have to say about it. I'm curious about Blink as well, let me know about that. I still haven't read The Tipping Point, which I also heard was good.
PS I think you hit it on the head about reading more efficiently while watching TV - I suspect it involves somehow turning off the TV... but I could be wrong. It's not something I've actually, you know, tested.
it turns off?
suggestion
Decide which books you'd like to read and which ones you like to download to your iPod and listen to them on the way to work or on road trips. Maybe the ones from your second list.
Btw The Tipping Point and Blink are both read by Malcolm Gladwell himself and available on iTunes. They are both excellent.
So now I have to find time to listen to books? I have no idea what to do. Too many things are going on here! Music and reading and baseball and psychology and baseball and the daily show and iTunes and the telephone and friends and a broken car and a dissertation and exercise and shopping for food and a chickie and baseball and painting my bedroom and my job and telephone calls and eating food and blogging and the daily show and shopping and baseball and cleaning and a chickie and oh my god how does this all fit?
Another thing that all my fit friends (and not so fit friends) are doing around here is listening books on their iPods while doing vast amount of cardiovascular activities.
Some of the things I hear are like this: “Man, I’ve got to do like two hours of treadmill next week. Does anyone have any new Podcasts or audio books I could download. I’ll never make it through it without one.”
Now it that’s not feeding your mind, body and soul then I don’t know what is.
Also my wife, the teacher, has verified that while some people are visual learners others are audible learners. So it’s all legit with the techa’
It turns off. Even I do it occasionally.
Ted, life is full, but the upside is - life is full! Did you ever think? Dag-nab awesome, huh?
Exer-what now?
I mean Teodoro! Crap! You can delete that ASAP if you must.
Not to worry, Bets. No need to delete that. I'm not anonymous. Just incognito due to Googlability.
Teodoro Crap shoulda been a contender along with Teodoro Callate. Kinda one and the same, if you think about it...
I read Freakonomics in May (I think it was May). It's a good and quick read. In most cases when an economist studies incentives and starts to ask why people do what they do, the answers are pretty interesting. My brother is an economist; his specialty is agricultural economics issues affecting sub-saharan Africa. It's really amazing when you start to examine what the real effects of international development programs are. He is, of course, far more qualified to speak about what the details of all those effects are than I am, but it's all quite interesting stuff.
My reading list is much less ambitious than Teodoro's, I must confess. I'm just lucky to get through my copy of The Economist each week.
I also read "Through Our Enemies' Eyes" by Anonymous not too terribly long ago, even though it's a bit dated in terms of pop consciousness. It was loaned to me by a good friend of mine who is a military intelligence officer. (An aside: He's one of the smartest and funniest guys I know. Not in any way what you'd expect.) He is serving right now in one of our overseas deployments - though I probably shouldn't say which one - and believes that the book is a great summary of the issues we're just not understanding as a nation. Fascinating book - far more nuanced than many of the shouting voices dominating conversations these days.
I also spent some quality time reading "Curious George Goes to the Hospital" with my younger son. Why is that stupid monkey so popular? And shouldn't be man in the yellow hat be brought up on charges? He steals the monkey from the jungle, brings him - against his will - to the city, and lets this untamed creature run around and set off fire alarms. Ridiculous.
Also, to my dear friend Teodoro: Join the TiVo revolution and get your life back. I hope that doesn't qualify as blam.
Let me not misguide you. If Stephen King had a new book...especially if The Dark Tower series had continued...I'd have forgone food and water to read it. I'm no snob. Remember that these are the books that I haven't read.
Curious George rocks. "Are You My Mother" is my favorite book of all time.
Gotta go. Sports radio is on.
"Are You My Mother" is not a Curious George book. It was a small paragraph about kids' books and I neglected a proper transition.
Teodoro, much as I love you, I believe that Curious George is a malevolent beast. The evidence:
1. Sets off fire alarm, leading to the fire department's arrival at a non-existent fire (from the eponymous book, Curious George);
2. Breaks out of prison, injuring a guard in the process (also from Curious George);
3. At hospital, creates mess that leads to disaster involving the upturing of food carts, gurneys, and hospital workers (Curious George Goes to the Hospital). Noteable: He is redeemed in this book by getting a sick little girl to smile. How hard is that?
4. At airport, climbs in plane without permission, puts hands - or are they paws? - over the eyes of the pilot while flying and falls out of plane. (Curious George Goes to the Airshow or something like that) In this case, he is redeemed by falling out of the plane and landing gracefully via parachute.
It goes on and on. The truth of the assertion "he was a good little monkey and always very curious" has never been adequately proven. I believe that he is indeed quite curious; however, George's inherent goodness is subject to some question.
It's actually great fun to read these books with my kids. I realize that some stories are not quite as harmless as they seemed when I was six. Curious George does indeed cause a prison guard to smash his face into a concrete cell wall. No apology is ever provided by the monkey. (Evidence once more of his more menacing nature.)
"Are You My Mother" is indeed a classic. I've read it with my boys around one or two million times.
I am very pleased that my own kids have latched onto the new classic for the current generation, which is, of course, Captain Underpants.
BTW, for those of you who don't actually know me, please know that I am indeed just having a bit of jest with the curious little monkey. The curious EVIL little monkey.
Kevlar, I haven't read but one Curious George book and that was years ago to a friend's young son. i seem to remember that CG always gets his comeuppance for his unfortunate highjinks, no?
Cap. underpants looks fun
In the first book, he goes to the zoo, which is a sort of comeuppance insofar as he is imprisoned with the other animals. However, it's presented as a happy ending. ("Here George, welcome to animal prison! Have a good time!")
In the later books, it appears that George operates with impunity. He's off wrecking the hospital, tipping over shelves of fine china, and telling the american public that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There's just never any payback for George.
on books:
i'd like to read blink and the tipping point. i'm currently reading dreams from my father, barack obama's book. it's an easy read as far as non-fiction books go (sometimes, i just have to fess up and say..hmm, i'm more of a fiction/memoir sort of girl), and i'm enjoying it.
anything by anne lamott rocks.
i finally got over my 'contempt prior to investigation' over harry potter..i cranked through 1-3 and am waiting for 4 from the library.
the library!! how i love thee. after realizing i read way too fast compared to the size of my checking account, i went back to my old friend, the library. yay, free books! i can't write in them like i am sometimes wont to do, but... the library. please support them in any way you can.
as far as listening to books.. hmm. this is just me, but i listen to music and read books. i like holding a book (even though my cat likes to see how she can come between me and my reading material), carrying it around with me, flipping pages, etc. i like books. so, the idea of an audiobook has never held any appeal to me.
besides, i'm still holding a major resentment that i still don't have an iPod.
that's that.
"R U My Motha" Is street classic.
...which was of course followed by the timeless "No, I'm A Brotha of Anutha Motha"
Vinnissimo,
Once again, I aspire to humor, only to be schooled by you.
You = funny.
Teodoro,
How readable are the Csikszentmihalyi books? They look absolutely fascinating, but I'm clearly a layman with regard to psychology. Are they sufficiently comprehensible for the average bear?
The Csikszentmihalyi books are awesome. Very readable. He was a professor at the U of Chicago for a long time while writing "Flow", the first of the series and a seminal work of modern psychology. I think he's at Stanford now and still very much in the game. These books are absolutely fair game for anyone.
for the record, as it would be a mouthful for some, the author mentioned above, has a Hungarian name that means "Michael little-Saint-Michael" translated literally. FYI.
I've read "freakonomics" and would strongly recommend it.
As I have been on a roll with a, uhm, certain topic here I can also recommend to inquiring minds a great book by a notable travel author, Bill Bryson. it isn't exactly about travel, it is called "the History of nearly everything" and delivers on the premise of its title but with the entertaining aplomb that he posesses. Curious about how far away the rest of the universe is? Why are their earthquakes here and not there? why do we know some things but not others? Bryson explains by way of describing the scientists themselves from today and throughout history and how they discovered, endeavored, lied and sometimes cheated to get these bits about life, the Universe and everything out to the rest of the world. a chunky book but very well worth it, it will open the eyes of the most ignorant or lazy.
I've heard about that book...I'd love to read it. Apparently, at the end of my life, I will have an entire library of fascinating yet unread books in my humble abode.
I had hernia surgery about ten years ago. Read War and Peace top to bottom, which never would have happened otherwise.
I recommend some sort of incapacitating surgery; you'll get through that book list in no time.
LOL!
I did the same thing when I had measles-as an adult! Three weeks in bed, I read basically everything that I could. I picked longer books first-first came Brothers Karamazov-and worked my way down. It is actually a shitty way to learn some literature but is probaly how a lot of people did read in the "olden days', being bed-riden much more often than we are now.
Just finished "Shooter". Bad book. Terribly ghost written, horribly mis-advertised, shoddily edited, poor use of God-awful similes, bad pacing, and a waste of an idea that could have been really, really intriguing.
On to better things: Betsy's book is next.
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