Recent Readings

I vaguely remember reading this book a long time ago, but I cannot recall who had recommended it. I liked the movie adaption.

More to come.

Started reading:	2011-10-21
Finished reading:	2011-10-25

Best book ever.

I bought an English translation for the kids, until they can read the original in French. I'm reading it to Vincent as I try to get the rhythm right. This translation is okay, but it's still a little awkward around the edges. Little fellow doesn't have the same familiar cuteness as the French petit bonhomme. But it is to be expected that a translation will never be exactly like the original.

This book is about friendship and what's important in life and it is also about death and loss. It tackles very deep issues with disarmingly simple language. It is very modern in its approach by paring things down to the absolute essential but at the same time using poetic elements to convey strong emotions succinctly.

I don't know that the kids are old enough to fully grasp the emotions expressed in the book, or to go beyond the literal interpretation of its central message. When I was a child, I didn't get the message either and it was only when I read it again, much later, as an adult, that I could seize its full impact. I hope the same can happen to them; that they will appreciate the beautiful, simple story and that they will want to revisit it when they're all grown up.

Curious factoid: my English translation states the original copyright as of 1943 whereas my French edition shows the copyright as of 1946.

Started reading:	2011-10-12
Finished reading:	2011-10-26

I'm a big fan of the xkcd webcomic and a friend got me this book.

You can read all the strips on the website, but the book had additional scribbles and notes in the margins that give us a glimpse into the mind of their author. Very geeky, always accurate, and some are definitely NSFW. Thoroughly enjoyable and a great gift for your favorite geek.

The author also added all kinds of little puzzles around the strips for the hard-core code breakers and problem solvers. Some are really easy to decode, like the one where each letter is replaced with its position in the alphabet (A=01, B=02, etc.) or using Braille patterns. Others use 2D barcodes that require more work to crack.

Started reading:	2011-02-10
Finished reading:	2011-02-15

Christopher Hitchens references Bertrand Russell a lot. This books seems to be a good place to start to understand Bertrand Russell.

The book is actually a collection of essays written by Russell over a 55 year period. I will comment on each one separately.

Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Defines what is a Christian. More than just living a good life, it implies a certain credo that begins with the existence of God. The piece then debunks the various proofs for the existence of God that have been advanced by past philosophers. He also highlights some of Christ's teachings that are not so popular among self-proclaimed Christians, such as "turn the other cheek" or "judge not" or "give to the poor", and others that are just plain destructive, such as the imminence of the Second Coming or Christ's conception of Hell has punishment for slights against his person. Religion does not appeal to reason, we accept it wholesale because of the disproportionate influence of our early interactions with our parents as a young child. "Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death."

Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

I got a good laugh at the opening statement: religion's only useful contributions have been fixing the calendar and predicting eclipses, and nothing else. He then discusses religions as social phenomena, started by individuals with strong beliefs that are almost immediately rejected by the people who carry out their legacy. Because the founders reveal one absolute and unchanging truth, their followers become "opponents of all intellectual and moral progress." The concept of sin is particularly dangerous because it gives people an excuse to indulge their sadistic urges at the expense of those who have transgressed the rules. Especially when it comes to sex.

"The objections to religion are of two sorts - intellectual and moral." We need the openness of the scientific method to decide truths objectively. Ancient morals were for crueler times that we have outgrown. The focus on the individual soul, and that it is sufficient to be good instead of doing good set Western religions apart and in the end are detrimental to social life.

Unrighteousness is behavior that is disliked by the herd, which is therefore righteous by definition. Such behavior must be punished. "The essence of the conception of righteousness, therefore, is to afford an outlet for sadism by cloaking cruelty as justice."

"[...] the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit and hatred. The purpose of religion [...] is to give an air of respectability to these passions [...]." These are more effectively controlled with proper, caring education than with dogma that is shrouded in mystery.

What I Believe (1925)

Russell sets forth his core convictions and his basis for living a good life. He begins by grounding man in the physical world and expressing how science is in the process of finding out all there is to know about the physical world. His views are somewhat outdated; whatever limits to scientific exploration were looming in 1925 have long been surpassed. But the intent remains that even if the world is much more vast than expected, it is still finite; therefore its exploration will also be finite, even if very long. Russell says how boring physical science will become when it is complete. "It is like climbing a high mountain and finding nothing at the top except a restaurant [...] equipped with wireless." To me, "wireless" was wifi. I'm sure it meant something else in 1925. :-)

"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge." Love is a spectrum between "delight" (taking pleasure in the object of love) and "benevolence" (actually wanting something good for the object of love, like sympathy, but with an action component too). Love is at its fullest when both delight and benevolence are maximized. Knowledge is objective scientific knowledge. When it follows the majority's desires, we call that knowledge "ethical", but this qualifier only applies to the relation to our desires, not to the knowledge when considered by itself. "Outside human desires there is no moral standard."

A society needs moral rules to reconcile conflicting desires among its members. Criminal law attempts to punish transgressions, but it is more effective to find ways to align desires together in a win-win solution. It is better for society to use scientific knowledge to measure and maximize overall happiness. But religion too often is a set of arbitrary moral rules that only support the ruling class of society, at the expense of everyone else. "They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm." This leads Russell to a line of thought where [consensual] sex in the absence of children is a private matter. Where children are concerned, he is adamant that measures must be taken to ensure their well-being.

Western religions have an individualistic perspective on how to lead a good life and often contain an element of catastrophic change or conversion. To Russell, the good life can only be led in a good society. It is necessary that it rest on more than mere conscience, but also include intelligence and health and a full social life. In the social context, individuals need security and courage.

Do We Survive Death? (1936)

Our belief in an afterlife is motivated by fear: fear of death, fear of the unknown.

Seems, Madam? Nay, It Is (1899)

Long-winded and pompous essay on the role of philosophy and whether we can explain reality purely in intellectual terms, separate from any desire for comfort or aesthetics. In its defense, it is dated 1899, when Russell was still pretty young and his style hadn't quite emerged yet.

A Free Man's Worship (1903)

Religion tries to make us feel important by pretending that all of Creation was built with us as its central purpose. Science shows us humanity's inconsequential place in the universe. There is an interesting progression of the idea of worship. "The savage, [...] having in himself nothing that he respects more than power, [...] is willing to prostrate himself before his gods, without inquiring whether they are worthy of his worship." "The divine power and knowledge are paraded, but of the divine goodness there is no hint."

Since there is evil in the world and God is said to be omnipotent, then we must conclude that either God is evil or it is a creation of our intellect. "The worship of force [...] is itself a prostrate submission to evil."

"To every man comes [...] the great renunciation. [...] The world was not made for us." First, we live in a world full of promise. Then, there is a period of despair, where we abandon hopes that we realize are unattainable. This act of renunciation can lead each one of us to wisdom where we can admire the world without the burden of desires.

On Catholic and Protestant Skeptics (1928)

Freethinkers coming from a Protestant background tend to be individualistic. They seek to lead a good life for themselves. Freethinkers coming from a Catholic background tend to be social. They seek for society to lead a good life.

Life in the Middle Ages (1925)

We are guilty of idealizing the Middle Ages and always showing them contrasted with our current epoch. "Most people are ordinary people, concerned with their daily bread rather than with the great themes of which historians treat."

The Fate of Thomas Paine (1935)

Paine took democratic ideas and made them available to every intelligent working man. He democratized democracy. His contemporary (Washington, Robespierre, etc.) tried to limit democracy to a select elite; whereas Paine insisted that it be of the people, for the people. He was crucial in promoting democratic ideals in England, America, and France, but in the end he died alone and destitute. He fought against tyranny, which put his at odds with those revolutionaries who wanted to become tyrant in place of the tyrant. "He was consistently opposed to every form of cruelty, whether practiced by his own party or by his opponents."

Nice People (1931)

A nice tongue-in-cheek look at the hypocrisy of people who claim to be of good morals but in reality use moral rules to gratify their sadistic impulses.

The New Generation (1930)

Just as scientific knowledge is informing our views of the world, we should also apply it to raising the next generation. Knowledge cures ignorance and makes actions more deliberate. Education is no exception, where new methods informed by new knowledge can replace the old dogmatic methods. Russell describes a social model where both men and women can pursue self-realization. Higher standards of living ease the burden of child rearing, freeing people for to pursue other goals. He also recommends letting children explore a lot more freely and let them go where their thirst for knowledge leads them. Taboos create areas of artificial interest and in the end are self-defeating.

These ideas may seem self-evident to us now, but this was written in 1930. The ideas that Russell rails against are the same ones that my parents were raised in.

Our Sexual Ethics (1936)

Modern life is evolving in directions that work against traditional, monogamous unions. We need to adopt new ethics to ensure overall happiness. What is detrimental to no one should not be proscribed. Rather than promoting chastity unsuccessfully and forcing young men to turn to prostitutes, it would be far better to encourage experimentation between members of the same social class. This can help everyone develop useful relationships that will help them grow into better citizens.

Freedom and the Colleges (1940)

On the subject of academic freedom, Russell contends that "whether a man is a good mathematician, or physicist, or chemist, can only be judged by other mathematicians, physicists, or chemists." Opponents to academic freedom would also want that such a person "should have never expressed any opinion which controverts those of the holders of power." He discusses the tyranny of the majority and how a healthy democracy must tolerate minorities.

There is an interesting argument regarding the tradition of freedom in the West. If we consider that dissenting opinions must be tolerated, it means that we need institutions that can guard them against the holders of power. The latter will have a strong desire to silence opposing opinions and there must be a force strong enough to counter them. In the West, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Church and the State were constantly pitted against one another. In Constantinople, the Church was subjugated to the State and therefore there never arose a spirit of freedom in Russia and other Orthodox countries, where the State went unchallenged, as in the West.

NOTE: This belongs elsewhere, but I'm noting it here for now. The majority opinion is self-reinforcing since each individual will naturally side with the majority to avoid being on the outside. It follows that any hope of progress lies with the minority opinion. If the majority is not kept in check and if it is allowed to successfully silence dissent, society will stagnate.

Can Religion Cure Our Troubles? (1954)

Russell wrote this article in 1954. "It is the question whether societies can practice a sufficient modicum of morality if they are not helped by dogmatic religion." His answer is yes, and that some important virtues might be better found by rejecting religion than by embracing it, such as truthfulness and intellectual integrity.

Russell describes how some rules are purely a quirk of the religion and how others have a strong social basis. While religion might have been useful to primitive societies in maintaining order, providing divine justice to cover the cases missed by the temporal one, this is less true in modern societies. The problem with bundling moral rules with religion is that once we start doubting the religious claims, there is a risk that we will reject the entire moral code along with the religion.

Religion and Morals (1952)

Can religion make us happy and virtuous? Russell argues that the virtue and happiness of believers is not really distinguishable from those of unbelievers. "There are various practical ways in which traditional morality interferes with what is socially desirable." What we need is tolerance and intelligence.

How Bertrand Russel Was Prevented from Teaching at The College of the City of New York

A journalistic-like account, by editor Paul Edwards, of how Bertrand Russell was offered a position at The College of the City of New York and how influential people who opposed the appointment fought it in the public opinion. They mounted a campaign to vilify Russell and any intellectual who would support him. When that didn't work, they took the fight to the courts and, with the help of a hardly objective justice, managed to overturn the appointment. This brought into question the notion of academic freedom and how a small minority can meddle in the affairs of others. The board of directors of The College of the City of New York, the faculty, the student body, the parents of students, and the academic community at large broadly supported Russell's appointment. Those opposed were religious groups with ties to influential people in New York. The case in court was even brought up by woman fearful for her daughter, at a time when the college was for men only and her daughter would therefore not have been able to attend or be exposed to Russell.

Started reading:	2010-10-16
Finished reading:	2010-12-01

Amazing pictures of objects in the Solar System, from the Nasa archives. This is more of a picture book, really. It's more like I'm lazily looking through it than actual reading.

I read about this book, and the matching exposition in an article in the New York Times. The pictures on the website were breath-taking, so I ordered the book. Some of them are pictures of the Earth taken from orbit, kinda like those of @Astro_Soichi on Twitter. Others are from other planets and moons, taken by space probes, some with false color. The writer worked with astronomers and astroscientists to ensure his false coloring was as close as possible to reality.

Started reading:	2010-09-06
Finished reading:	2010-09-06

This is Hitchens' attempt at explaining Orwell's thoughts and to show how they are still relevant half a century later.

Hitchens opted for a thematic approach to Orwell rather than a chronological one. He has separate chapters for imperialism, socialism, nationalism, etc. Each time, Hitchens shows how Orwell's views were shaped by events in his life and how they evolved in his writings. Hitchens also shows how other writers perceived these views, some are contemporaries of Orwell and others are writers who came well after him. It was interesting when Hitchens had to disapprove of Salman Rushdie, whom he considers a close friend. Hitchens was definitely less harsh about this friend than about the other detractors.

Personally, I am not very familiar with Orwell's life, so a timeline of major events and publications would have been useful. I knew that Animal Farm came before Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I hadn't realized that Orwell had died right after publishing the latter.

Imperialism: About imperialism in general, and British imperialism in particular, Orwell wrote: the whole colonial 'racket' was corrupting to the British and degrading to the colonized. This passage shows how he empathized with the common people and how he disliked those who are entrusted with power but turn out to be bullies.

Political Left: About the Left, there is a hilarious quote where Orwell takes the contents of the Trotskist trials in Russia and changes the characters to English personalities. In it, Churchill is trying to convert the entire British Empire to communism by getting postal workers to draw moustaches on postage stamps. It's hilarious, until you realized such fabulations were taken as real in communist Russia. Orwell's total distrust of totalitarianism did not win him many friends in socialist circles who espoused the Russian Socialist Revolution. Many had set up to praise the Moscow regime and returned in disgust. Orwell didn't need to go there; his experience in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War had been enough for him to see the truth behind these regimes. He had first-hand exposure to how history is written by the victors, which would culminate in the thought, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, that he who controls the present controls the past.

Political Right: On the Right, Orwell's love of individualism and popular wisdom didn't win him too many friends either. More exactly, they were quick to edit his thoughts, picking and choosing the bits that they liked and silencing those that they didn't agree with. They reconstructed an ideal Orwell, one that would be best suited to their own points of view. Orwell was a staunch anti-communist and was convinced that Socialism would inevitably lead to despotism. This view was not popular while the Powers of the West were still in alliance with Socialist Russia to fight facism in Europe. In one passage, Hitchens shows how a quote by Orwell about European nations being too weak individually resist super-powers and needing to band together. This quote was selectively edited to portray that these nations were too weak and needed to align with a super-power.

Orwell envied the freedom that was pervasive in America and its culture. In America the tradition of nineteenth-century freedom is still alive, though no doubt the reality is as dead as it is here [in England]. This quote shows that he yearned for the freedom that he felt was a available in America but he also feared disappointment if he should ever go looking for it and find it long gone. He was also very in love with the Birtish culture he had been raised in and resented the Americans caricatured the English.

The image of Orwell that emerges is that of someone who wanted each individual to be allowed to pursue happiness, distrusted elites (especially leadership social classes), and loved intelligence. He had a profound love for the pastoral English countryside and other staples of English life. But in a practical way, such as when he write about those who idealize nature: The fact is that those who really have to deal with nature have no cause to be in love with it.

As much the humanist as he might have been, Orwell may have had shortcomings regarding women, both in his novels and in his writings. Hitchens mentions that the women in Orwell's life were all strong-willed and very intelligent. Other anecdotes seem to indicate that he held very progressive views, but maybe these had more to do with women's low status in society and that he saw them as one more exploited class. He didn't care much for idealists that were all talk and no action, and his treatment of feminists was no different.

Late in his life, he drew up and shared a list soft socialists in what seems like a betrayal of his long hatred for the underhanded means of communists and facists. Hitchens tries to redeem Orwell by showing that the names on the list were either well-known for their softness, or were already a matter of puclic record, or were actually helped by their new-found publicity. Dubious, and disappointing nonetheless.

Hitchens' book closes with a review of how Orwell's style progressed from the angry young man style of his early novels to his progressive hatred for totalitarianism that culminates in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Overall, the book is an extensive look at Orwell's novels, with extras from his other publications and his life. It does a great job to cover the ideas that Orwell expressed in his novels and how they were perceived by the litterary elite. He was a humanist that cared deeply about those oppressed by society and was very critical of the upper classes doing the oppression. He witnessed the rise facism and communism, appealing to populist and nationalist feelings. He saw how the educated elites were dismantled so they could not justify opposition to would-be despots. It is good, even now, to remember how democratic institutions can be co-opted by groups who seek only their own advancement at the expense of other members of society.

Started reading:	2010-07-23
Finished reading:	2010-09-01

I first heard about the idea of the Long Tail on my first day at Google, back in 2005. Four years later, I borrowed the book from work, out of curiosity. The shorter commute and new friends on the train mean less time for reading, so this one might take me a bit to get through.

I like the three requisites for capitalizing on a long tail market:

1. Democratize the means of production to generate a lot of content.
2. Means of distribution that are essentially free make that content available to everyone.
3. Powerful technological tools help make sense of it all.

These three factors combine to create large numbers of niche markets that can sustain themselves. Essentially, what used to be the province of the privileged few is now in the hands of everyone. There will be lots of low quality products, but technology can help us find the worthy pieces hiding in there. I love how it democratizes everything. There is still a large demand for hits and critics, but the elites don't hold all the cards anymore and anyone can contribute.

The section on marketing in the Long Tail does a very good job of describing the new dynamics and some of the impact of end-user engagement.

The book does a good job describing new businesses that exploit the long tail, like Amazon and Google. But it was written just before the explosion of YouTube and Facebook and Twitter. Now, more than ever, we're in a world of citizen journalists and an empowered general population. The book is very "of the moment" and it shows its magazine roots. It throws around a lot of names that were relevant at the time of publication but who are not so relevant just a few years down the line. Blockbuster and Rhapsody are gone now.

Started reading:	2010-05-21
Finished reading:	2010-07-22

A collection of satyrical cartoons about brand management. Not quite as disfunctional as Dilbert, it is written from an insider's perspective. And whereas Scott Adams is very critical of the corporate culture that he had to endure, Tom is very much in love with brand management and he takes us on a tour of its quirky landscape.

Each page shows one cartoon in the top half and Tom provides some commentary in the bottom half. The commentary are interesting when they talk about the inspiration for a given cartoon, but too often they simply explain the cartoon for the audience. I'm tempted to say that if a cartoon needs explanation, then it is a failed cartoon. Unless you're being exclusive like xkcd, as Tom explains on his blog, in which case the point is for the cartoon not to be understood by the general public but only by the limited community it targets. Again, cartoon + explanation becomes a losing proposition.

Nevertheless, it's a clever little book and a nice way to kill some time. And you get to learn something about marketing and brand management at the same time.

I like this cartoon about the higher cost of organic products. I agree that they are better for you, but it saddens me that the lower economic classes cannot afford them. If it's better for you and will keep people healthy, then it should be made available to everybody. Keeping all of society healthy is better for the overall economy than catering only to the rich and dealing with the sick poor.

Started reading:	2010-04-28
Finished reading:	2010-05-07

Health and nutrition from a college professor that has been studying the field for the past 30 years. Now that I work at ShopWell, my aunt thought it might interest me.

It is very well written. The author is very knowledgeable and has worked in this field for over 30 years. His style is clear and concise, free of technical jargon and very approachable by the lay person. He talks about the major impact of getting enough sleep on the metabolism. He prones aiming to eat for you health and to recognize your body's signals that your not hungry any more, and your weight will take care of itself. Diets where you always fell hungry don't work because the body fights back and you end up regaining the lost weight, and then some.

Well worth reading, if you can read French. :-)

Started reading:	2010-04-01
Finished reading:	2010-04-23

This book was written by a former colleague of mine. For once, I know the author.

I'm kinda annoyed that there are no chapters. Once in a while, the narrative stops in the middle of a page and the action resumes at some later point at the top of the next page.

The novel reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke, showcasing technological advances for the near future and social trends more than the characters. But is is more cyberpunk in nature, set in a completely distopian future. And sometimes, the author gets stuck on UI details, such as "I touched the close control on the screen and it went black" instead of the simple "I turned it off." He acknowleges influence from Neal Stephenson.

Technology is definitely the main character here. The protagonists and the intrigue are only there to provide a framework to showcase various futuristic concepts and devices. When the author's imagination runs dry of new ideas, the main plot is quickly brought to a conclusion and the novel ends. Rather abruptly.

The beginning, where the author lays out a vast array of new concepts and ideas, was quite catchy and drew on my curiosity. The middle part started to develop the main intrigue and attempt to provide the characters with a semblance of depth. I was expecting some twists and turns, but everything was progressing quite linearly. The end unforseeable only in its brevity. All plot lines are brought to an end and the story concludes in a way that felt rushed.

I think back to Umberto Eco's "The Role of the Reader" where Eco explains that the reader picks the parts of the novel that interests him or her and that the master novellist will weave multiple paths together in one work and let the reader pick the one that interests them the most. Here, there are three obvious paths: technology in the various contraptions, sociology in the interactions between the character, and intrigue in the main plot. The first one was a good hook but lacked cohesiveness. The second led nowhere. I got more and more interested in the third one when the first two petered out, but it received the least treatment of the three and ended too quickly, without any noticeable twists or turns.

Still an enjoyable read, but was disappointing in the end.

Started reading:	2010-03-08
Finished reading:	2010-03-27

A touching story about loss. Susie, the main character, has to adjust to loss of life and a new existence in her heaven. The people she knew and whom she left behind have to adjust to their loss of Susie. It's a very interesting look at grief and how different people cope with loss.

The author's concept of a personal heaven was very intriguing. It is unfortunate that she didn't explore it further. How does it operate? Under what rules does it run? It appears to be multi-layered, with some form of progression, as demonstrated by the short interlude with Susie's grand-father. I understand that she wanted to focus more on what happens to the living, and I would have liked it better if she had kept the communication channel between the dead and the living strictly one-way. As the years go by and Susie follows what's happening to the people she knew, does she mature too? Either she is very mature for a 14 years-old or else she continues to grow through death. Either way, the voice of the novel is clearly that of a 30-something, just like the author, for better or worse.

The characters are rather one-dimensional. They set out on one track and follow it down the novel. People who meet at 14-15 years old end up married to each other? Gimme a break. Otherwise, I did like her portrayal of teenagers: they are not overly prude, still preoccupied with sex, but with enough self-respect not to be too promiscuous.

Started reading:	2010-01-23
Finished reading:	2010-02-06

A very hasty re-read during the holidays. I skipped some of the more boring parts and focused on exposition about the main gimmick of the series: the paratwa.

First one best of the lot. Others are typical three-act story: first act is self-contained. Second act expands on the first and sets up the third. Third act tries to explain everything, wrap up all arcs, and has unexpected twists.

Started reading:	2009-12-25
Finished reading:	2010-01-03

The books open with a passage by St. Augustine:

If no one asks me about it, then I know what it is; but if someone asks me about it and I try to explain it to him, then I do not know what it is.

I just love Patrick Süskind.

The opening quote is about time. Süskind co-opts it to talk about love. When I first read it, I thought it applied equally well to good programming. I think it really applies to any process of the mind that is deeply grounded in our personal experience. Each one of us has certain thoughts that we understand intuitively, through our unique experiences. When we try to explain these thoughts to someone else, we fail utterly because we cannot reason objectively about them and the other does not share our experiences.

This book is very short. Too short, actually. He starts down a number of promising avenues, but stops way too short. And in the latter parts, he gives a very one-sided opinion in his comparison between Orpheus and Jesus. I would have liked a slightly longer, more balanced exposition. He can still come to the same conclusions, but it would feel less forced.

I enjoyed reading the book. It brings up interesting quetions. But I was left wanting for more. It felt a bit like a broken promise.

Started reading:	2009-10-12
Finished reading:	2009-10-15

I read Mr. Rashid's Taliban when it came out, right after 2001-09-11. I was very impressed by his extensive knowledge of that part of the world. As a journalist, he has been covering Central Asia pretty much since the Soviets invaded Afganistan in 1979. He has been part of most major events in Afganistan and Pakistan. He has interviewed pretty much everyone involved in the region's political scene during those years. He has really deep knowledge that far surpasses anything I could expect from Western sources.

This book aims to cover the years from 2001 to 2008 and the aftermath of 9/11.

I remember being very depressed after reading Taliban. It seemed liked the whole of Afghanistan was could not be salvaged. The situation seemed hopeless. But reading Descent into Chaos gave me hope. The people of Afghanistan and Pakistan are very resilient and they will do the right thing if given a chance. That is, when they are not being abused by communists, warlords, dictators, fundamentalists, corrupt officials, drug runners, all under the eye of Western powers. But the glimmers of hope have been few and far between since 2001. There are long periods of hardships for the population as various factions try to control the region.

This book is absolutely stunning. Rashid takes you into the lives of citizens of both Afghanistan and Pakistan for the past ten years and covers all of the major events of this period. He is extremely well documented, having personally interviewed or covered all the major players on all sides. He also cultivates personal relationships with many key individuals in the region, including Afghan president Hamid Karzai, giving the author unparallel access to what they are thinking as events unfold.

There are many dimensions to the material in the book. Time is an obvious one. There are also many concerns, from fighting to security to the economy to the drug trade to international intervention. And there is also the personal narative of the many individuals: Karzai in Afghanistan, Musharraf in Pakistan, Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, the US State Department, Taliban leaders, warlords, U.N. staff, and so on. Each of these threads cross each other again and again in a very tight weave. The level of complexity is what makes reading about real events such a rich experience. It is impossible to disentangle any one of these threads in order to fit the linear format of a book, but Rashid tries his best. The overarching concerns are the main organizational elements in the book. There is a chapter on the security situation in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2005. There is a chapter on economic development between 2002 and 2005. There is a chapter on the flowering of the drug trade from 2002 to 2007. There is a chapter on the emergence of the Pakistan Taliban. As you go from one chapter to the next, you go back and forth both through time and through the cast of characters. It gets very confusing very quickly, but Rashid gives us just enough reminders for us to keep it straight. Almost. The temporal jumping around is definitely what gave me the most trouble, as I tried to relate events in one chapter to those in the previous ones and which events had not happened yet.

As I was reading this book, events continued to unfold in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. There is a new administration in the US and in Pakistan. The Taliban is in the news regading Swat Valley. A NY Times article was talking about the rise of heroin addiction in Kabul. Former US ambassador Khalilzad considered running against Karzai for President of Afghanistan and might take a high-level position in his administration instead. Two US researchers were on a show saying the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan was blown out of proportions by the media (it looks pretty serious in the book).

The downside of reading about recent events is that the book leaves you in the middle of the action. You have to keep reading the newspapers to find the eventual resolution at some point in the future. The upside is that you can keep reading about it for years to come.

Started reading:	2009-03-25
Finished reading:	2009-05-20

Starts with a cool idea: instead of spending time trying to get better at things you have no talent for, why not work at being great at things you have a natural affinity for? Each of us has things they tend to be good at (talents), and things they tend to not be good at (let's call them handicaps). Why should we spend time and energy overcoming our handicaps, at the expense of our talents? At most, we'll be average at them for a lot of effort. Instead, we should spend our efforts in line with our talents and become really great at them.

The book outlines 34 themes, or areas of strength that Gallup has identified after looking at millions of profiles. It also gives you access to an online assessment that will magically tell you your top five strengths. Each theme has a nice description that makes you warm and fuzzy inside. Each also has activities to help you develop it. It's kinda like astrology, really: the descriptions are so fuzzy and use such powerful words that no matter which one you happen to read, you'll find that it matches you at some level and will sound like something you'd want to get better at. Luckily, there's the online assessment to make sure you only bother with five of them so you don't get too confused.

Of course, you cannot take the assessment without first purchasing the book. The entire intro reads like a pressure sales pitch for a psychic hotline. I'm very suspicious of opaque claims supported by pseudo-science with made-up names that come complete with a dead founder with a ludicrous made-up title that must be repeated in full every single time: Father of Strengths Psychology, Dr. Donald O. Clifton.

I like the premise of pursuing your own strengths, but the execution feels more like a religious cult than an exercise in reason. I went along, just for the sake of entertainment. My top five strengths are: Input, Context, Individualization, Intellection, and Adaptability. A few of the others sounded good to me, like Futuristic, for example. But the magical assessment program did not pick it when it used a whole slew of weird questions to somehow plumb my subconscious and decide on what my top five strengths were.

The book is essentially a sales pitch for the website. It tells you precious little about anything. It's only real value is in the code to take the online assessment. The book is definitely not worth $20, and I would not pay $20 for a self-help test. To me, it's barely a step above the get-rich-quick scam where you make a video on how to get rich in which you tell people to make a video on how to get rich.

Started reading:	2009-03-11
Finished reading:	2009-03-12

I've been hearing about Salman Rushdie even since The Satanic Verses, but never really got around to reading his work. Milan Kundera speaks very highly of him. I got this book when Rushdie came to speak at Google. He mentioned that the action took place in part in Renaissance Florence and that he even managed to include Dracula in the novel because of the period in which it is set. This is promising, since I read quite a bit about politics during the Renaissance and also about Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula.

The novel opens at the court of Mughal Emperor Akbar, a high point of Indian cultural development. This is a area where I knew precious little and it was very interesting to educate myself via this novel. Like Umberto Eco's novels, this one was researched very meticulously and the reader can get all kinds of little historical bits and pieces from it. It also uses historical figures for the main characters and adds elements of the author's invention in between the pieces from the historical record. Somewhat like Maurice Druon did in his cycle Les rois maudits, but whereas Druon wants to write a novel about History, Rushdie uses History as a backdrop against which he paints his own story.

The novel worked very well for me until near the very end, when part of the action moves to the New World and tries to use non-sensical metaphysics to explain temporal anomalies. That last bit reminded me of Eco's The Island of the Day Before where the main character tries to go back in time by crossing the date line, under the belief that the date line has strange metaphysical properties. But the remainder of the novel is quite excellent.

Started reading:	2008-06-18
Finished reading:	2008-08-07

Kundera draws parallels between the evolution of music and the novel in Western culture and how it shaped Western thought. While his bias shows in many places, this is still a great exploration of artistic forces in Western culture for the past 500 years.

Part 1 sets up the European novel as the defining art form of the modernism and at the source of Western ideology. By promoting ambiguity and letting characters define their own moral compass, they enabled the development of an individualistic thought in the Western philosophy and directly leading to our putting a value on the person as an individual.

Part 2 shows how Kafka's legacy has been tainted by the opinion of his biggest fan and how said fan used his position to twist and manipulate Kafka's art to support his own esthetic views.

Part 3 draws a parallel between the evolution of the European novel and that of European music in since the XIV^th Century. Both were moving away from the exhalted and highly stylized forms of the past and reaching for a deeper connection with the real world by studying what others might consider mundane.

Part 4 takes a single sentence from Kafka and shows how all of his French translations are wrong. His point is that the author who moves his art forward takes it beyond what is considered "good style" at the time, whereas the translator usually tries to promote "good style", thereby undoes the author's innovation in order to bring the work back within accepted boundaries.

Part 5 analyzes a short story by Hemmingway to demonstrate how the modern novel tries to capture the essence of the present as it happens, not as a reconstruction of something that has happened or as an artificial construct that supports the action, but as it happens in real life, in all its mundanity and irregularity.

Part 6 contrasts the classic period, where form was all important and pieces include strong parts held together by bridges and structural elements. Modernity breaks out of the form and does away with the weaker elements, keeping only the strong ones. And this happened across Western culture, in music, novels, and even philosophy with Nietzsche.

Part 7 covers the artistry of Janacek as a one who ushered in modernity in Western music. He also discusses how Czechoslovakia, with it's small country mentality, hindered his recognition by the larger cultural scene. This is a theme he will revisit later in The Curtain.

Part 8 shows how novelists like Kafka and Tolstoi explored, thanks to the novel, aspects of the human psyche decades before science started looking them. They showed how our opinions vary and evolve throughout our lives, and how at any one point, we try to make the best decisions based on incomplete information. We should be careful when judging the past with our 20/20 hindsight.

Part 9 deals with artists and their attempts to control their legacy. Stravisnky and Janacek fought long and hard against those who would make changes to their works, often removing the novelty they had introduced. Kafka's efforts to nail down his legacy were spoiled by his executor, who published anything and everything he had ever written, including pieces Kafka thought were not ready, like "The Trial". Proust talked about how novelists show a different personality through their novels than that revealed in their lives, so seeking to interpret the novel as a key to the author's life is to miss the artistry.

Started reading:	2008-05-05
Finished reading:	2008-05-16

This is a biography of Marc Favreau, the actor behind the Québec clown Sol. I remember watching Sol in a kid's tv show when I was young. Sol has been a fixture of the Québec artistic scene since the 1960's. Favreau died a couple years ago and the author was a personal close friend. Sounds promissing.

The book paints a great portrait of the cultural scene in Québec after World War II until the Quiet Revolution in the late 1960s. It shows the great influence from France as local artists were trying to find their voice. It shows that this period was not the Great Darkness that others claim it was, but that there was a vibrant cultural scene and that the questioning of institutions had already begun.

As to its main subject, Marc Favreau, the book turned out to be quite the hagiography. If we are to believe Mr. Germain, Marc Favreau was quasi-perfect. He always managed to get his way, everything he touched turned to gold, he never had any major disappointments in life. Everybody loved him. While it is hard to dispute most of the facts in the book, I suspect that maybe the author skipped some of the passages that would have cast a less favorable light upon his idol. Now, I really want to re-read Milan Kundera's Testaments Betrayed, which deals exactly with this situation, where an artist's legacy is left completely in the hands of his or her most fervent fans, for better or for worse.

Marc Favreau was pretty much self-thought, which usually gives me pause. But he seemed to do very well for himself. Even though he taught himself everything he knew, he kept trying to learn new things throughout his life. To me, that's the sign of an open mind and I know a lot of people with diplomas that don't have it.

The pages that described his death from cancer were very touching. Very intimate, very human.

My memories of Sol go back to when I was a very young lad. But I had not realized that even back then, the children tv shows where he played were already in rerun (Sol et Gobelet was produced from 1968 until 1971). It was really nice to see how the character was born and evolved throughout the years. Taking inspiration in the Commedia dell'arte, Favreau created a character starting with an auguste clown who suffered at the hands of the whitefaced clowns. He evolved him through the years into the mouthpiece of an inner whiteface that is hiding inside Sol and is trying to guide society using the persona of Sol, an apparently harmless vagrant.

A while back, I got a DVD boxed set of Sol. When I started watching them, I was a little disappointed that he didn't seem to be as funny as I remembered. The gags were too easy, too disconnected. The whole felt a little amateurish. Now that I have a better understanding of the man behind Sol and the message he was trying to pass through his character, I want to look at Sol's shows once more to see if maybe it was just that I didn't get it.

Started reading:	2008-04-17
Finished reading:	2008-05-04

A very interesting look at how the Internet is changing the way we communicate, even the less positive aspects of communication, such as gossip and shaming. The book is full of real-life examples taken from recent Internet events, such as the Star Wars Kid. In many of these cases, the person who first posted a piece of data did not intend for it to travel so far. What could start aimed at a small group of friends would quickly get out of hand and be broadcast to the entire world. Or someone trying to shame someone else for a minor infraction could lead to virtual lynch mobs.

You can think of it as information traveling away its source and being slowed by the friction of the medium. Most people cannot afford very wide distribution using traditional media, so information does not travel very far from them. Even with large distribution media such as newspapers and television, editors can decide what is worth publishing or not and can therefore influence the spread of information. People can feel in control of the information they spread around.

But the Internet has a very low bar to entry and virtually no controls. In essence, it is a frictionless environment for the spread of information. Once you release something, it immediately escapes your control. You are guaranteed that it will be taken as far as the most radical point-of-view within the audience, whether you like it or not.

One nice part of the book deals with social networking sites. In the real world, we have many overlapping circles of relationships: family, friends, coworkers, etc. We usually share information within one circle but rarely between circles. Something that is of interest to my family may not interest my coworkers, or the members in my kendo club. Pretty much all the social networking sites today have a flat view of my "friends" and lumps all relationships together. On Facebook, there is no distinction between family and friends and coworkers and fellow kendo enthusiasts. They all see the same profile, they all see what is happening in my other circles of relationships. I cannot expose some fact through my profile to one group but not to the others. There is a place in the market for a social networking solution that would let me manage groups of relationships and better mirror real-world behaviors.

There are two things that bug me about this book.

First, Solove wants to use the law to keep people from taking things too far. It works for copyright law. But the law operate within national boundaries. There are no national boundaries on the Internet. There is no body of law that can govern international events. And why should American norms govern an incident between, say, someone in China and someone in Ghana.

Which brings me to the second thing that bugs me. Solove decidedly takes an American-centric take on norms of behavior. Not only that, but he seems to assume that a single set of norms can cover everybody. There is a wide array of cultures out there and half the things that one cares about is annoying to most of the others. There are countless things that are inconsequential to one culture and severe transgressions to another. There cannot be a single set of norms that applies across the whole Internet.

It was still a good, quick read, nonetheless.

Started reading:	2008-03-26
Finished reading:	2008-04-11

A very raw first person account of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, as seen by the military commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in place at the time. Dallaire does not try to over-analyze everything or conjecture what everybody was thinking or not at the time. He simply tells of his experience in Rwanda, what he saw, what he heard, and what he felt.

Dallaire is a French Canadian who grew up in Montréal, torn between English- and French-speaking factions of youth, trying to rise through the ranks of a Canadian military that was decidedly condescending to French speakers. But he was definitely not prepared for the challenge that he would face in Rwanda; one of which is his tendency to assume the best of intentions from people and his expectation that everybody wants to coexist peacefully.

One downside to this first-person testimony style of writing is that the book abandons the story of Rwanda as soon as Dallaire leaves Africa. He makes just a few allusions to "what happenned afterward," but I had to go to Wikipedia to find out what came of many of the players in post-genocide Rwanda. In the opening of the book, Dallaire said he would not presume to analyze the situation in Rwanda or probe the hearts of the principal players, but would simply testify to what he had seen and what he had heard and what he had done. He delivers with zeal on this promise.

Started reading:	2007-12-05
Finished reading:	2008-01-22

A little bit foaming at the mouth and decidedly one-sided. Hitchens goes to great length to describe all that is wrong with religion but does not really take the time to compile some of what is right with it. I think there would still be more bad than good, but his argument would be that much stronger if it appeared like he had done all his homework.

Hitchens makes an argument that religion was useful during the infancy of our species, but we've outgrown the need for it. We invented stories to explains things when we had no better explanation, but now science and philosophy have given us tools to help us understand the universe much better.

He includes references to Daniel Dennett and his Breaking the Spell. He also makes me want to read Bertrand Rusell, now. While I was reading the book, I watched some of his videos on YouTube and I ended up watching others by Sam Harris. He has an interesting point of view too.

Started reading:	2007-11-02
Finished reading:	2007-11-21

Irshad came to give a talk at Google and they were handing out her book. The talk was engaging and I decided to read the book to see more of what she had to say.

It is really nice to see a perspective of Islam from the inside. Irshad questions many aspects of her religion but wants to hold on to it, so she seeks answers that can reconcile her with it rather than turn her away from it. It is very personal and thought provoking.

Towards the end, she touches upon the concept of individuality, the ability for each one of us choose who we want to be and contribute to society, each in our own way. This resonates with a feeling I had at previous jobs where I felt I didn't have to toe the party line all the time as long as I was being constructive most of the time. There are always those who feel that everybody must accept the mindshare all the time and who believe in conformity instead of diversity of ideas.

Started reading:	2007-10-02
Finished reading:	2007-10-18

Reese Erlich was at Google to promote his book The Iran Agenda and though I was too late to get a copy of it, he had a few copies of this book for sale, so I got one for $10. It was published just before the U.S. went in Iraq, so the tone throughout is of impending war with still a fleeting hope for peace. It all seems so long ago.

A long laundry list of the lies perpetrated by the Bush administration as it built its case against Saddam Hussein and how the media were in on it.

The two most interesting pieces are analyses of a speach by President Bush and the text of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441. Each sentence is commented by multiple political experts. It was really interesting to see the use of language and how innocuous sentences can be twisted to mean anything.

Again, many of the facts are anecdotal and even though tragic, I sometimes wondered how widespread some of the opinions were. For instance, the authors blame the sanctions imposed on Iraq for the hardships endured by the civilian population. Not lifting these sanctions is causing a humanitarian crisis within the country. How much of it is really the responsibility of the parties enforcing the sanctions and how of if is the reponsibility of the Iraqi government?

Started reading:	2007-09-25
Finished reading:	2007-10-01

Great Harry Potter, but exposes many of the limitations in the Harry Potter series. Rowling's target reader in an eleven year old. This limits her writing both in the complexity of the plots and in the subject matters she can address.

The storyline is very linear. We follow Harry as he goes about his quest. We see everthing through his eyes. There were many opportunities to explore other points of view, like Ron's or Hermione's, to get inside their head, see their own struggles, but we only get to see what is externalized, in as much as it affects Harry. Compare Harry's first kiss with Ginny in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince against Ron and Hermione's first kiss in this book. The latter lacks any emotion or real warmth; it is almost comical in its development and its timing. I was disappointed by its banality. I wanted more than this after following these characters across seven books and waiting for this moment for the past four.

There are also many opportunities to explore side plots, which Rowling totally ignores. We only get echoes of what's hapenning at Hogwarts, or what the other members of the Order of the Phoenix are doing while Harry is pursuing his quest.

To keep the plot simple and within the grasp of an eleven year old, Rowling relies heavily on widely used formulas: bringing back every possible character ever mentioned for the big finale, Mrs. Weasley as the super-protective supermom, the whole "King's Cross" chapter. In parts, it is so formulaic that it appears downright cheezy. The same goes for the entire epilogue, where apparently Ginny doesn't get a say in naming her own children. In the entire series, each character has their own name, no one is burdened with having to live up to the name of some ancestor, except for Tom Riddle. This last bit, in the epilogue, is a strange and troubling departure, one I don't find particularily tasteful.

To illustrate how the Harry Potter universe is ever unchanging and how nothing beyond the main protagonists has any opportunity to evolve, witness how House Slytherin removes itself from the final battle with Voldemort. This would have been a great occasion for the four houses to put aside their differences and come together to the defense of their school. It could have begun a healing process for the Wizarding society that is divided by the issues put forth by Voldemort. It could have shown to judge people on an individual basis, not solely by their association. It could even have ushered an new era where students are no longer sorted into Houses anymore, like we hear Dumbledore wish for in one flashback. But Rowling does not want to take it that far; Slytherins are evil and selfish and they will not fight for their school. In the glimpse of the future that we see in the epilogue, things are still the same at Hogwarts, with Houses and sorting and so forth.

The events in the Harry Potter series present a major challenge for the Wizarding society. As they make their way through those traumatizing times, they have an opportunity to learn something about themselves and emerge on the other side transformed and enlightened, changed for the better. Here is an opportunity for change on a societal scale that Rowling completely passes by. She had a chance to reinvent her universe based on a new foundation and she compeltely ignores it. Instead of a story about how an entire society can grow through the actions of a courageous few, we get a story about a single individual's struggles. I guess this is one of the risks you take when you willingly dumb down a story "for the greater good."

Thus brings me to the themes Rowling choses to discuss in her novels. On the one side, she wants to portray realistic teenagers, with all that entails: search for self-identity, peer pressure, and of course puberty. On the other side, she's writing for pre-pubescent readers, which pretty much precludes any sexuality angle. I think this is slightly disingenuous. All relationships are utterly platonic and dating is reduced to holding hands and taking long walks by the lake, stealing an occasional kiss when nobody is watching. Harry is afraid to display any signs of affection towards Ginny in front of her mother. Ron and Hermione refrain from any intimacy when Harry is present. There is a major dissonance between what you would expect of normal teenagers like the ones in the story and the behaviors Rowling has them display.

I was re-reading the scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix where Harry kisses Cho Chan. Afterwards, Hermione comments on Cho's state of mind and her conflicting feelings towards Cedric and Harry. She goes so far as to hint Cho could suffer socially for going out with Harry after she had dated Cedric. She dated him for a few months and it's been over six months since he died at this point. Is she expected to go into mourning forever for a guy she briefly dated? She is only 15 or 16 years old!

In this book, Harry, Ron, and Hermione live together in a tent for over six months, cut off from the rest of the world and with nothing better to do than stare at each other. Ron and Hermione are obviously attracted to each other and yet nothing happens. This is utterly unbelievable. It goes way beyond any notion of suspension of disbelief. It borders on stupidity. If you put any three normal 17 year olds in a tent for six months, someone gonna end up pregnant. Even keeping the whole thing chaste, there in no point in Ron and Hermione denying their love for that long.

One character that has evolved as the series progressed is Neville Longbottom. He starts out as an inept nerd that everyone picks upon. By the middle of the series, he starts being of genuine help. He really comes into his own in this book, though. He shows courage and skill and even a modicrum of leadership. I wish we could have said the same of the other characters. Draco Malfoy is one very disappointing failure on that front. At the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, there is a brief moment of possible redemption for Malfoy. But it is fleeting and amounts to nothing in the end.

What I really liked of the first three Harry Potter novels was how Rowling kept expanding her fantastic universe. But by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, she had started to close down on expansion and starting tying everything together. In this book, she finishes this process and ties the last few knots that close the entire construction. It goes as revealing Harry's ancestry up to some ancient and forgotten wizard family and even giving him an ancestor in common with Voldemort. I don't like these devices; they tend to make everything rather incestuous. I like it much better when the author leaves things open to interpretation and lets the reader's imagination roam. It is not necessary to fully specify every single detail and relate everything to the action that is going on at the time. The universe does not have to be hermetic. When you first read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, there is a rich tapestry of things that are thrown in off the cuff and that the reader is free to flesh out as they like. By the time you get to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the world is fully defined by the author and the reader's role becomes much more passive.

It may seem ironic that I rail against Rowling for defining everything in her novels when that's what I admire in Tolkien. And maybe it's not exactly fair to compare Rowling to Tolkien. But in Tolkien, while everything has a backstory, not everything is intimately related to the main story. Rowling goes the other way and tries to relate every element in the universe to Harry's struggles.

I quick point of curiosity: Rowling never even mentions the Americas or Asia or Africa. All the action takes place in Western Europe, with just a very brief mention of Egypt. It is as if they didn't even exist. Voldemort can conquer the entire world simply by subjugating Great Britain.

But all this is nitpicking. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this lastest book and I had a hard time putting it down. All the things I pointed out were just minor irritations while I was reading. Harry's story comes to a satisfactory conclusion, even if the relationship between Harry and Voldemort is so tangled and convoluted that it borders on the ridiculous. Many of the more subtle associations have to be explained by other characters and it would have been nice if the reader had been given enough clues to figure it out on their own. Even the parts that are formulaic are exciting and engaging, which is why those formulas are so popular to begin with. Once you accept that the book was written for eleven year olds, it is very captivating and fulfilling.

Started reading:	2007-07-21
Finished reading:	2007-07-26

Short and to the point.

Orwell shows again his theory of revolutions where the middle class (pigs) harness the lower class (other animals) to overthrow the upper class (humans), but only to put themselves as the new upper class. For the lower class, nothing changes. Orwell will expound further on this principle in Nineteen Eighty-Four

It is quite obvious that Napoleon refers to Stalin and Snowball to Trotsky, but I wonder if Orwell was thinking of anyone else in particular with other characters like Squealer or Boxer or Minimus, or Benjamin. Most of the other named characters are most likely just generic proles. But Benjamin with his long memory and Boxer with his unwavering devotion to Napoleon stand out from the crowd and could very well refer to proeminent participants of the Communist Revolution.

It turns out the Wikipedia article on Animal Farm confirms and expands on my initial thoughts.

I like how right from day one, Napoleon is already scheming and doing things behind the backs of the other animals, such as the business with the milk. He is also very quick to get the pigs preferential treatment on the grounds that their work is so much more important than anybody else's. Right from the start, the other animals didn't stand a chance.

In this book, Orwell shows how the Revolution's transition happens and how the new status quo is achieved. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, he will show how this status quo is maintained, at least for a while.

Started reading:	2007-06-14
Finished reading:	2007-06-20

Christopher Tolkien strikes again. This time, he worked really hard to limit the editorial work, like he did in The Silmarillion, and to present a cohesive text out of all the different versions found in The History of Middle-Earth. Mission accomplished. The introduction does a half-decent job of setting the stage from all the material leading to the story of Túrin, so that the main text can proceed without to much exposition. But I'm not sure how much of this intro would actually stick with a reader unfamiliar with Tolkien's tales of the Elder Days. Even I had to refer to the map fairly often to keep up with the development of the story.

As I was reading this book, I sometimes went back to my other Tolkien books to compare versions. It was nice to see all the details for some of the scenes, instead of the summarized version in The Silmarillion. Like the one with Saeros, for instance.

I also liked the writing style too; it suggests old heroic tales and myths. For instance:

Huor, his brother was tall, the tallest of all the Edain save his own son Tuor only, and a swift runner; but if the race were long and hard Húrin would be the first home, for he ran as strongly at the end of the course as at the beginning.

Started reading:	2007-05-30
Finished reading:	2007-06-10

A colleague suggested this book to me, saying it was in the somewhat along the same line as Fast Food Nation.

Pollan identifies four food chains that go from where the food is produced to our plates.

industrial

Based on corn and highly processed. Everything on the plate comes from corn: corn-fed steer, corn-fed chicken, high-fructose corn syrup. Relies a lot on heavy mechanization, which can dehumanize the whole thing.

big organic

An effort to return to the roots but still supply a large scale market. The rejection of hormones, artificial fertilizer, and antibiotics makes the whole enterprise more risky. Again, heavy mechanization is needed to meet the demand.

small organic

Aka slow food. Self-reliance and a focus on tightly integrated ecosystems. Everything on the farm is part of a cycle. Nothing is goes to waste; one thing's waste is another thing's source of nutrition. Each producer must optimize according to its specific circumstances, which creates issues of scale.

foraging

Picking directly from nature. This is where we are closest to our place in the world's ecosystem. Completely impractical in a modern society, but interesting nonetheless.

My sister studied food processing and now works as part of the industrial food chain that the author describes. While he mentions all the downsides of industrial food making, he also highlights how that process strives to be always more efficient and feed everybody at lowest cost.

I liked that the author actually went to the length visiting farms and talking with the people involved. Many of the issues he could cover from a first person's perspective. But in most cases, the experiences are too removed from his normal life for him not to be completely overtaken by them. One example is when he goes hunting, something he admits his upbringing did not prepare him for. He gets caught up in the thrill of his first hunt and generalizes his newfound state of mind to something all hunters experience all the time. From my own experience with martial arts, I can tell that this early exhilaration eventually quiets down and the mind clears out to go about its business, as exemplified by his hunting buddy who stayed cool in the action. So some of his reflexions may be questionable, but the book is still filled with lots of factual information and was very informative.

Towards the end, I was reminded of one of the lessons from Antoine de St-Exupéry's Little Prince: people and things become special to us when we spend time on them. And this includes our food: the more you invest of yourself in preparing a meal, the more special it becomes and the more personal too.

Started reading:	2007-04-05
Finished reading:	2007-05-12

A colleague suggested this book to me, saying it was about a manager we had had at a previous job. Hehe.

Helps you recognize the bad people in your life.

Started reading:	2007-03-10
Finished reading:	2007-03-18

What a treat. This book felt like the best read I've had in a long time. This may seem unfair to some of the great books I've read recently, but this one was at the same time instructive and of very easy access. It covered everything from the technical aspects of painting frescos to the artistic concerns that went into the vault of the Sistine Chapel, to the geo-political landscape of Italy at the beginning of the 16^th Century.

The books starts with Michelangelo's early career and how he landed the commission to fresco the vault of the Sistine Chapel. It was very interesting to see the life of a tradesman in those days. The author goes over Michelangelo's character and his relationships with various figures of the days. As the book follows the progress on the vault, we are made privy to the ever changing political landscape and the ongoing competition with Raphael, as each one pushes the boundaries of art.

I have read quite a bit about the Papacy during the Middle-Ages and this was a very nice refresher of the events in Northern Italy at the time. The book is as much about Pope Julius II as it is about Michelangelo. But the real focus of the book is the fresco and its numerous panels and figures. The author walks us over all the difficulties, tribulations, and inventions that continually happened throughout the project.

The book has many illustrations and nice color plates of the entire vault. But for some reason, it is missing the two pendentives from the altar wall that were considered by Michelangelo's contemporaries as his best work. There are also other works, notably by Raphael, that are not depicted and I had to go to the Internet in order to see them. But it was still a very enjoyable read that gave me a new prespective on this cornerstone of Western culture.

Started reading:	2007-02-17
Finished reading:	2007-03-08

A friend gave me this book in 1990 and I really enjoyed it. It still stands out as a gift that was totally unexpected, totally not the kind of book I would have gone for, and yet it was an amazing experience to read this book and discover its story. The other Friday, I was just looking for a movie to go to and discovered quite by accident that they had made a movie of it. I immediately called a buddy of mine who had read the book in high school in Germany and we hurried down to the cineplex to see it. The movie was fabulous and made me want to read the book again.

I got interrupted halfway by having to read another book for work. Luckily, this didn't take too long.

Wow! What a treat. This novel just blows your mind. It is very original in the way it presents an otherwise banal story. Süskind does a great job of bringing to life the world of Rennaissance perfumers and life in Paris at that time. I really like how the author describes each and every scene mainly through its smells. This is a novel about the sense of smell and Süskind does a great job of awakening us to all the smells that surround us every day. And of course, he chose a setting that must have been rich in smells of all kinds: mid-18^th Century France, and Paris especially. And one funny tibbit: Süskind seems to take pleasure in killing off the majority of his secondary characters the moment they leave the story. This works particularily well in the movie, turning it into a kind of dark comedy. The main subject is dark enough that these moments of tragi-comedy are most welcome and lighten the mood a little bit.

One problem I had with the book was how the author avoided the Seven Year War by making Grenouille sleep through it in a cave in a remote area of France. Now granted the character needed the period of inner development and the author needed to skip a period of European history that would have greatly reduced the mobility of his character, but still. _He slept in a cave for seven years._ Come on! Luckly, the novel picks up from there.

I find it interesting that the movie softened Grenouille somewhat. In the movie, he appears as a simple soul with one obsession who is rather oblivious to the human cost of his enterprise. In the novel, Grenouille is much darker and actually arbors a deep hatred for humanity. It is interesting that the director figured that audiences would react better to a variation on Forest Gump than one of Hannibal Lecter.

Started reading:	2007-01-08
Finished reading:	2007-02-15

I read this book when it came out and recently I felt the urge to read it again. I remembered bits and pieces, but large chunks are missing.

Once again, Kundera is exploring the human psyche using strongly typed characters that exemplify the aspects he wants to cover. This one is interesting in that the author is himself a character in the novel. He starts by describing how he got the idea for his main character, fleshes it out with secondary characters, and by the time we reach the end, he is actually meeting the characters himself. You have to read it to really appreciate it.

There are many clusters of characters. Agnès and Paul and Laura and Bernard (the nature of relationships). Goethe and Bettina (the pursuit of fame and immortality). Goethe and Hemmingway in the afterlife (on the consequences of fame and immortality). Rubens (the pursuit of sex). Kundera and Professor Avenarius (futility).

Started reading:	2006-11-03
Finished reading:	2006-11-27

Back in high school, I had to read the "Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men", but I had never read the first part of the book we had. Now, in part out of curiosity and in part out of nostalgia, I decided to take a look at it and maybe even re-read the second discourse. I wanted to see what I might have missed the first time around.

Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

Already, Rousseau has idea that man is fundamentally good and that it is civilization that makes him bad. He upholds his version of virtue as above all else. His version is grounded in service to the community an putting the greater good to the group above personal gain. Anything else leads to inequities and all evils.

Rousseau's point-of-view reminds me of what I understand of wahhabism in the islamic world. Both praise an earlier state of society where everything was better. Both recommend letting go of many modern concepts and inventions. Simpler times called for simpler ways and there were fewer opportunities for actions that promote one person's interests at the expense of others.

The writing style relies on the reader having a strong foundation of classical learning. He often goes back to the Greek Antiquity and the conflict between Athens and Sparta. He is very critical of scholasticism, but I guess it is normal for someone from the Enlightenment to dismiss medieval thinkers.

The style of his responses is very interesting. After going to great lengths to explain why his works stands on its own, doesn't need to be defended, and how his opponent didn't really disagree with him in the end, he proceeds to dismantle the critic's opinions one by one.

In this work, he recommends a serious study of the Scriptures as all one really needs to lead a virtuous life and be mindful of others. His calvinistic roots are showing. He does not address other religions. Are Hebrew or Muslim texts just as good for this purpose as the Christian Bible? And what about Eastern religions? Maybe the thought didn't occur to him, immersed as he was in a Christian world.

Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men

The first discourse was drawing comparisons to ancient Greeks. The second discourse goes on straight through to the most primitive societies. He is trying to paint a picture of man's _natural state_ from before he started living in society.

I keep comparing this text to Desmond Morris' "The Naked Ape". Rousseau keeps ranting about how people take their assumptions about the way they live and put them on how people lived in the past. He chastizes other philosophers that put modern ideas in the head of primitive men. But he does not totally escape from the trap himself. In many places, his European bias shows. And nowhere so plainly as in his treatment of women. They just don't fator in, according to his views. Morris had the benefit of 200 more years of scientific thinking, a secular education (I think), and he could count on the theory of evolution. Rousseau has not of these things, though he touches on how long it would have taken for the natural man, barely more than an animal, to discover and develop the basic tools for living in a society: language, building, fire, agriculture, metal working, etc.

It also reminds me of Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell" where he sees the development of religion and faith as an evolutionary process. Rousseau cannot articulate the impact of a small differential over many generations, but his reasoning follows in the same direction.

I think Rousseau idealizes the natural state a little too much. The fact that he is an armchair naturalist, living in a tamed European countryside, is obvious when he says things like how in nature, no one is ever sick and that all creatures act with moderation. He does not consider the higher infant mortality rate or the dangers of childbirth, to name just two. I guess these things didn't matter to 18th Century European minds.

But it is still mazing how he diverges from the accepted thinkings of his days, specially those influenced by religion. His point-of-view is definitely humanistic. At the time it was published, it was yet another work that removed Man from center stage and questioned his dominion over Nature. No wonder his contemporaries found it shocking.

Just as the first discourse laid the foundation for the second one, this one lays the foundation in its turn for Rousseau's "Social Contract". I'm tempted to read that one, now.

Links:

• Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmis les hommes in Wikipedia
• Discourse on the Arts and Sciences in Wikipedia
• Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men in Wikipedia

Started reading:	2006-08-24
Finished reading:	2006-09-21

Second reading. I first read this book while in highschool.

Lots of possible allegories is possible, here. Each character clearly illustrates some concept that was important to Mishima.

Now that I have become more familiar with Japanese culture through kendo, I was better able to appreciate the novel. Truly a masterpiece.

Started reading:	2006-07-31
Finished reading:	2006-08-17

The author takes a critical look at religion as a human, natural phenomenon, subject to forces from the natural world. In the opening chapters, he goes to great lengths to appear non-threatening to religious people, trying to convince them that their religion is deserving of a critical look. It's a very different style from other stuff I have read where the author is usually much more straight-forward (e.g., Noam Chomsky or Milan Kundera).

On the same day I started reading this book, which proposes to apply the scientific method to the study of religion's evolution, I attended a talk by Kevin Kelly on the history of the scientific method and it will likely continue to develop in the next 50 years. Nice coincidence.

Dennett proposes that religion evolved following the mechanisms of memetics. Various memes compete for survival within human culture and the fittest perpetuate across generations. Following this view, if a meme, an idea, is too foreign to be transmitted unchanged from one generation to the next, it will only result in a short-lived cult that will most likely not survive its founder. If, on the other hand, the meme is very useful (or perceived useful) to its hosts, it will be passed on to descendants and thrive. As situations changes, new memes are introduced and old ones die. Dennett proceeds to examine many elements of religious experiences, from folk religions and shamans to organized religions with controling bodies, and determines for each element what may have given rise to it, what conditions are needed for it to thrive, and how many of them may have combined to lead to today's religious landscape.

Since the word atheist has a bad rep, he mentions that increasingly, non-religious people are refering to themselves as brights, much in the same way that homosexuals refer to themselves as gays. They do not imply by this that non-brights are the opposite of bright, much like non-gays are not sad, they're straight.

The style of the book takes some getting used to, at least for me who is not used to the Socratic method. Most assertions are put down as rhetorical questions, so you're never sure if the author is opening a new line of questioning or closing an old one. Also, the presentation style lacks an establishing section at the beginning. So as you follow the author through his reasonings, it is not always obvious where he's leading you. At the end of the section, there is a QED that often takes you by surprise. If he had laid down his goals at the onset, I would have been in a better position to appreciate how each step lead me in that direction, instead of being taken by surprise by his conclusions.

Started reading:	2006-05-09
Finished reading:	2006-06-09

My other favorite author. Usually not an easy read, but you end up less stupid for it.

The main character lost his memory and relives his childhood by examining the litterature he was reading as a child in fascist Italy: comic books, translated novels, fascist propaganda. It is a very good look at a fascinating world. Later, when the main character regains his memory, he takes stock of his life and looks at how his life was shaped by patterns and events in his youth and teenage years.

I was a little puzzled by the ending. I will need to reflect upon it a little while longer. I think it ties to his appreciation of Cyrano de Bergerac earlier in the book. I guess that makes it the most desireable ending one could have hoped for.

This book brought back memories. Just as the main character is revisiting his past, rediscovering his childhood based on what he read at the time, I was also going through my childhood, the books I was readings, and how they affected me. Thank you, Mr. Eco, for this stroll down memory lane.

Started reading:	2006-03-22
Finished reading:	2006-04-25

Goes back and forth between highfalutin pop psychology and science fiction. The reader must remember that the author is not a philosopher by training.

Part of the problem, for me, is that at first, the book asks you to challenge your assumptions, but then presents a farfetched model that can be neiher proven nor disproved and asks you to accept it wholesale.

It's a nice exercise at challenging assumptions and trying to prove absurd things just for the sake of logical argument.

Started reading:	2006-02-23
Finished reading:	2006-03-20

I work there now. I started at Google at the end of August 2005, right about the time the book ends. What's more, I came to the Bay Area in 1999, around the same time that Google started really taking off. I still remember the first time a friend mentioned Google to me, a new search engine that had a new page ranking system. I wasn't convinced at first and it took me a few years before I finally switched to Google for my web searches. Old habits die hard.

As I read through the book, going through the years, I could compare what was happening at Google to what I was doing at the time. What was I doing wherever instead of being where the action was at?

The authors are clearly big fans of Google and Larry and Sergey. At times, the are clearly gushing, including the parts about Larry and Sergey's chilhood. But overall, the book is very informative and clearly relates the spirit of innovation and caring that is the Google culture.

Started reading:	2006-01-03
Finished reading:	2006-02-01

Malcolm Gladwell was giving a talk at my office. He was very lively and a great speaker. He had some ideas that seemed controversial, or at least outside the mainstream. He definitely piqued my curiosity. I got the book for free, but now I might just go out and buy his previous book too. (As a follow up, someone did give it to me as a Christmas 2005 present.)

Malcolm Gladwell deals with subjects from the world of science, but he is a preacher at heart. He cites the works of others, but only papers that support his position. He does not present a balanced view of the topics and you have to take him at his word that his experts are at the top of their field.

The scientific approach shows all the evidence, even the contrary one, and builds a theory that encompasses all data. It lets you come to your own conclusions, based on the evidence. Science requires unbiased knowledge. A preacher, by opposion, asks that you accept his opinion at face-value. He presents a single point of view and holds it as the unquestionable truth from then on. His job is simply to convince you that he is right. Preaching only requires faith, which has a lower burden of proof. As I read the book, I felt that it asked for more faith in the author and his ideas rather instead of offering comprehensive and unbiased knowledge about the issues, and it did bother me a bit.

The book still made for a very good read. The ideas are definitely stimulating and can prompt you to reconsider the weight you place on first impressions.

Started reading:	2005-10-26
Finished reading:	2005-11-09

I love reading Kundera. He opens my mind to the arts and makes me want to know so much more. This one is not different.

In this essay, Kundera explores further the nature of his art form: the novel. He starts with an interesting idea that nothing happens in a vacuum and that art pieces take their value from their place in a continuum. If a composer, today, wrote a piece exactly like Beethoven, it would be worthless. The same piece, written in the days of Beethoven, would be a masterpiece. The music continuum has moved forward and a given piece of music has a different value depending on where it is located in that continuum. In the book, Kundera will try to map the continuum of the artform of the novel and highlight some of its landmarks.

The first roadblock is that the history of an art is not tied to that of any one nation. The evolution of a given art moves between countries without consideration for their individual national histories. But each culture tends to highjack its artists in order to affirm itself in the face of the world. Kundera calls it provincialism, or narrow-mindedness.

And this is where Kundera's genius starts to show. He grew up in Czechoslovakia and later emigrated to France. He knows what it is like to be part of a culture that is a small part of the world literature and to join a culture that is a large part of it. Each sees itself differently in its relation with the rest of the world, and how it deals with its artists and those of other nations.

When he describes the narrow-mindedness of the small, I could hear echoes of opinions expressed in my native Québec; even though he is talking about Czechoslovakia, he could just as well have been talking about the people and attitudes that I grew up with. Small nations hang on to their culture so they don't get swallowed by the larger context. Their artists are what keeps them distinct. For an artist to leave the smaller context to take part in the greater one is nothing short of treason.

Now that I live in the United States, I can also relate to what he calls the narrow-mindedness of the great. After all, here is a country that has a World Series where the US is the only participating nation. :-) Great nations come to think that their culture is quite sufficient; who could need anything more?

From there, Kundera proceeds down the road of the evolution of the novel as an art form through the ages. Starting with Rabelais and Cervantes and going through a series of authors from the four corners of the western world, he explores the characteristics that are unique to the novel. Novels explore human nature by looking at the mundane in the characters and showing them as products of their surroundings. This was in contrast to the previous litterature where characters were predestined by their origin and dealt with profound moral choices.

At one point, Kundera comments on the nature of tragedy. Two characters hold on to two sides of a same coin and neither can win without destroying the other, leading to their own downfall. Each side becomes justified and guilty at the same time. There lies the essence of tragedy, and with it the possibility of reconciliation when both sides accept their share of guilt. It shows the relative nature of what hold to be true. Well, all that stopped after World War II; manichaeism reasserted its place and the world became black and white again, out went any relativity, and with it the guilt and any hope for reconciliation. From then on, it's been us versus them.

The last thing I want to cover is Kundera's treatment of bureaucracy through the works of Adalbert Stifter, Max Weber, and Franz Kafka. In a bureaucracy, the employee is not expected to understand the problems his office is dealing with, but rather to blindly execute the orders given to him. Stifter's character cannot help dealing with things according to their nature and finds himself ill-suited for being part of a bureaucracy. By the time we get to Kafka, the bureaurcacy has become omnipresent and there is no escape it anymore. Here, I find it relates to my work as a software engineer. I am actively fleeing bureaucracy in my work life; I want to deal with problems, not blindly follow instructions that come from someone else. It is interesting to see how people that are otherwise well-intentioned can nonetheless fall into the trap of bureaucracy and create these large structures from which all thinking has been removed.

Kundera is much more eloquent than me, so get this book and read it for yourself.

Started reading:	2005-08-24
Finished reading:	2005-09-02

Less whiny than the previous installment. Not quite as long either. That's two good starting points. A lot of the action is rather simplistic but makes for entertaining reading. It'll make a good movie when they get around to it.

I think Rowling fell into a trap of her own making. She first conceived the series where each book spans one school year at Hogswart. At first, this is nice because the novel can take its pace from the various milestones in the school year: holidays, exams, etc. But it also forces her to sometimes stretch the action in ways that seem unnatural. For instance, Harry gets assigned an important task and he does nothing about it for a full month until the next available school calendar milestone. He knew the task was critical in a scope much larger than the school, and yet he does nothing about it. A lot of elements in the book lend themselves to this kind of urgency and end up being delayed, apparently for the sake of ending as the same time as the school year instead of well before, say, Halloween.

In the American edition, each chapter is headed by a small vignette that illustrates some of the action in that chapter. After I had read Chapter 4 (of 30), I decided to look ahead at all the chapter titles and vignettes, just out of curiosity. Now, when you look at a small image on top of some words, it is very hard not to ignore said words, especially when they are highlighted one way or another. The same goes for the text on the facing page. This is how I came upon the major event of the novel, which occurs in the last few paragraphs of Chapter 27 and continues in the opening paragraphs of Chapter 28. But I was not ready, yet! I was still on Chapter 4! Damn those authors that but a chapter break right in the middle of the key event in their novel! Some would say I shouldn't have been reading ahead in the first place, that I got what I justly deserved. "Curiosity killed the cat," and all that nonesense. Phooey.

Still, a very enjoyable installment in the Harry Potter series. It reminded me of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the complexity of the intrigue and the level of background exposition for the world of Harry Potter. But don't go and read ahead; trust me on this.

Started reading:	2005-07-16
Finished reading:	2005-07-27

Second reading. I first read it as a teenager back in highschool and I only remember that I had liked it a lot. Having mostly forgotten it all, I'm decided to have another go at it and see if I still relate to it as a grownup.

I have a new found appreciation for the power of metaphor and the work of the poet.

Some quick, rough notes:

It is pointless for the artist to explain himself to others. People with the right sensibility will understand on their own those without will never understand anyway.

Le voyage and the principle of "la fuite en avant."

Started reading:	2005-06-10
Finished reading:	2005-06-29

Second reading.

Essay about the nature of mediated experiences and the trade offs we make between being in control and being able to do complex things. He uses the history of operating systems between Apple, Microsoft, and Linux to illustrate the discourse and draws parallels with the evolution of culture and pop-psychology.

I've enjoyed Stephenson's fiction writings and this is a smart essay where he shows that he's a geek too. Some of the Windows versus MacOS is starting to show its age, but the points about mediated experiences are still valid. A good, quick read.

Started reading:	2005-05-06
Finished reading:	2005-05-13

Diatribe against American imperial policies.

Early on, Chomsky warns his reader not to confuse state power with a country and its people. One can be critical of state policy while praising the country and its culture. Interestingly enough, one reviewer on Amazon.com has fallen into that trap and assumes that since Chomsky is critical of the current administration, he must hate America too.

Chomsky documents how the Monroe Doctrine has shaped American policy, both foreign and domestic for the past 150 years. He uses newpaper articles, declassified documents, and political analysis to show how successive administrations have built up their military supremacy to an unparallel level while at the same time taming the "great beast" of public opinion, giving them the freedom to use that power to the benefit of the national elite. Examples come from involvements in Central and South America, the Cold War including the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the post-Soviet era and the war on terror, to the war in Iraq. The progression is quite frightening

The book includes 28 pages (10%) of notes listing sources for each quotes, and a 12-page index. You can check out his facts for yourself, if you have the time and patience to track down all those sources.

Note:

If you look at the dates during which I was reading this book, you will see that they coincide with George W. Bush's second inaugural address (2005/01/20). In it, President Bush put forth a goal to promote freedom in the world. The future will tell if this was the latest incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine. In reaction to the inaugural speech, the New York Times published, on January 30, an op-ed by Tom Wolfe tying the address to the Monroe Doctrine and how successive administrations gradually expanded its reach until it spanned the entire globe.

Started reading:	2005-01-11
Finished reading:	2005-01-28

The author builds up a case that shows how English-speaking Canadians have persecuted the French-speaking population from even before the Conquest in 1763. Throughout Canada's history, the British colonial powers have repeatedly tried to remove this troublesome population of former French nationals that does not want to disappear from the face of the Earth quietly.

I thought at times the author was piping his own horn. There are definitely places where he reads much more into what some writers are saying than a normal person would. But one cannot deny the documented historical events that show dogged determination of WASPs in getting rid of everyone else.

Like Michael Moore, you must take this book with an appropriate amount of salt. It is an opinion piece by its author and one must read it in that light. Nonetheless, the work is very well documented and is a great refresher course in Canadian history, even if it focuses on all the not-so-great aspects of it.

Started reading:	2004-07-12
Finished reading:	2004-09-15

Isaac Asimov's seminal novel about robots and how they behave. This is a collection of short stories that document the evolution of robotic technology in the world of tomorrow and the societal changes they trigger.

I started reading it in preparation for the movie, knowing full well that the movie has nothing to do with the book, except for the title. I had bought the novel a long time ago, because it's a classic, and figured I'd read it someday. So that day has finally come.

The book is a collection of short stories that were published between 1940 and 1950. In is interesting to see how the author looked at political development in the future, how in the end, there is a large russo-american block that dominates the planet and an old, decadent Europe that is now good for nothing. Luckly, things didn't pan out that way (yet), but it gives us an insight in how they saw the world back then and where they saw it going. It is also curious how to them, atomic energy would become ubiquitous in the future, like in George Orwell's "1984" and Ray Bradbury "Fahrenheit 451".

Started reading:	2004-07-03
Finished reading:	2004-10-07

In this novel, the main character searches for the Holy Grail by following clues in Leonardo Da Vinci's artwork.

I've already read a fair bit about the Knights Templars and grail quests. It's been done before. Usually better. I still think the best novel around these conspiracy theories is still Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Eco's characters obsess about as much about wild conspiracy theories, but at least they get grounded once in a while.

The characters in The Da Vinci Code weave complex, omnipresent conspiracy theories that fit within Western Christian culture, but fails to take into account some of the other major contributors to Western thought, such as Judaism and Islam. It bugged me. That, plus the fact that he placed the action in Paris for effect and uses cute little French sentences to charm the reader. The problem is that real French people from Paris would not speak like that. In at least one case, it was a direct translation of an American idiom. Mr. Brown, you are just plain silly. By the way, at one point he refers to the Hopi language word Koyaanisquatsi, meaning "life without balance". It is the title of an amazing movie by Godfrey Reggio, which Reggio admitted he invented from to Hopi words: koyaanis for "out of balance, falling" and qatsi for "life, existence". The Hopi would combine words to signify concepts, but not the combination koyaanisqatsi, which the director invented for his movie's purpose. He said so during a panel discussion on the DVD for his other film Naqoyqatsi.

Started reading:	2004-04-15
Finished reading:	2004-05-06